Authored by Carolyn Kane, Product Evangelist at Hyland
Imagine designing a super-highway that moves vehicles at top speed through rough terrain, eliminates bottlenecks and traffic jams, and improves the day-to-day efficiency of residents and businesses.
Now imagine that you designed this super-speed highway, but you didn’t include a way for people to access it. Your highway might be fast and efficient, but many travelers have to go around it in order to get to their destination.
In my industry, we call this a workaround.
This frequently happens to processes that still rely on paper forms or an unintegrated electronic form (like a fillable PDF that has to be printed or emailed). It’s like having a highway without an access ramp. People have to try to kick off that process in some other way (like scanning the form, emailing the form, or processing manually), instead of just hitting “submit” and knowing that their form is saved and the process is moving forward.
Creating on-ramps
Because OnBase forms are processed by Workflow immediately upon submission, they are the ultimate on-ramp to an automated process. No scanning or manual import is required, and thebest part is that they index themselves!
Fortunately, designing forms can be the easy part of automating your process, with a point-and-click designer for Unity Forms and Image Forms to make form creation intuitive, simple, and fast.
Thinking about access
Not everyone on the highway started in the same place. This seems obvious when talking about roadways, but with process automation you have similar considerations. Where should your users access the form to kick off a process? Allowing them to access forms in a convenient manner means less delays overall.
Depending on your industry, you may need to have “external” users fill out forms in addition to your own internal users. If you’re in government, education, insurance, finance or healthcare – really, any industry that works with the public – extending form access to users outside your organization will be very important to streamlining your processes. Fortunately, OnBase Forms can be accessed from a browser on a desktop or mobile device, so that they can be easily filled out and submitted anytime, anywhere.
Accommodating different types
Think about the different vehicles you see on the highway—trucks, busses, private cars, ride-sharing vehicles—they all have different purposes and slightly different needs. If you want to move the contents of your house, you want to use a moving truck, but if you are just taking your family to see grandma your hatchback will do just fine.
In the same way, OnBase Forms offer different tools for different needs. Unity Forms are the configurable option, offering no-code electronic forms with endless flexibility and dynamic behavior. Image Forms are designed to replicate a paper form, with users filling it out by typing instead of writing—with many of the advantages of Unity Forms built-in to improve the experience over paper. And HTML-based E-Forms offer the endless possibilities of a fully custom form.
A process isn’t automated unless your forms are electronic and integrated
Even if your forms aren’t paper, you may not be automating your processes as much as you would like. Downloadable forms and forms received by e-mail still require manual steps and unnecessary workarounds. For a fully automated process, you want to be sure that forms are integrated with your workflow so that processing can begin the moment the user hits the submit button.
Your On-Ramp to Complete Process Automation
Ready to pave your on-ramp to a super highway of streamlined data collection, workflow and overall optimized efficiency? Check out this forms management webpage detailing all things eForms, courtesy of my friends at ImageSoft!
We Want to Hear From You!
Are you building your on-ramp alongside your super highway (i.e., in the process of implementing various automation tactics), or will eForms clear the path to optimized efficiency for your organization?
Answer in the comments section below or on our LinkedIn page. We read and respond – promise!