Banking Issues

Bucheri McCarty & Metz LLP
Certified Public Accountants
and Consultants

Report:
Form Automation

Automation and Forms?
Computers have revolutionized businesses in many ways. The greatest gains in productivity have been in creating, storing, and retrieving documents and forms. Computers and networks allow physical resources, people and information to be shared more easily and affectively.

Stand at the copy machine much?
How many times do you find a file, pull out a form, fill it out, and then make copies of it. After spending all this time, how often do you realize the form has been updated and you need to go through the entire process again?

Write, type, proof, correct, type, proof….
You fill out a form and put it in the secretary’s “in” basket, along with all the other tasks she has. When she finally makes it to your form and gets it typed, she puts it in your “in” basket. Now, when you finally make it to that form, you have to proof it. Oops! You found a mistake. Back to the secretary’s basket…retyped…back to your basket. This can be a vicious circle! However, with automated forms, you turn the circle into a straight path, from start to finish. With automated forms, there is no need for writing, typing, proofing, correcting and so on. It is all compacted down to just typing the data onto the form as you receive the data. It’s that simple.

Increasing the value of information:
Sometimes increasing the value of information involves decreasing the costs associated with collecting and processing that information. That is where form automation comes into play.

How about a Return on Investment?
We wholeheartedly agree that Return on Investment is more important than the latest and the greatest. However, we find small businesses can usually take a giant step in the right direction with a low investment. There is a solution that will get you 60 to 80% of the way there on a cost/benefit basis.

Here’s how:
Consider automating forms using a down and dirty technique! With a little training, a little discipline, and tools you may already have, you can automate part of your forms process in a manner that will help you achieve many of the benefits of the complex, expensive document control systems! With a few meetings with your key personnel, we can show you how to use software like Microsoft Word or Excel to save your company thousands of dollars in paper and lost productivity!

Benefits of Automated Forms:
Some ways automated forms can help your company:

Saves time, paper and sometimes even postage by utilizing e-mail to distribute automated forms:

	within the office
	outside the office
	to select individuals
	or even mass e-mail distribution

Insures only the most current forms are being used.

Forms will be centrally located and easy to find.

Forms can be accessible from almost anywhere - when included in your company intranet.

Simplifies workflow.

Frees up staff to perform other duties.

Eliminates errors with form-validation techniques.

Automated forms can be the starting point for more sophisticated, database-integrated forms.

Use the Design Process:
We strongly encourage you to take an organized, comprehensive look at your form usage:

	Acceptance: Call a meeting and create a “team” to look comprehensively at all the forms you use. Build consensus as to the goals of your “Automated Form Project!”
	Analysis: Gather every form you use. Create a chart in excel that lists each form, all “fields” on the form, its purpose, who uses it, etc. On a scale of 1-10, how necessary is this form? While doing this, try to combine forms if possible, and eliminate forms if you can. Less is more!
	Definition: Decide what criteria you will use to automate a form. Consider benchmarking current paper usage to use as a basis of calculating ROI in the future. Also, always be mindful that sometimes “the old way” works better than automation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
	Divergence: What other issues should you address with this project? Do you have (or need) an Intranet? Can you utilize e-mail forms? Who will be in charge of maintenance?
	Selection: Try to select 40 – 60% of your current forms that can or should be automated. We can help our clients determine which of their forms may work best for automation.
	Implementation: Time for the fun part! We can show you how to automate the first few forms and the more complicated forms. Or, we can do them for you.
	Evaluation: Be sure to put checkpoints in your calendar to insure you are following through on the details. Insist on an ROI. Re-establish goals and processes.

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To learn more about infotex, visit us at www.infotex.ws, or call us at (800) 466-9939. Fax to (765) 236-2333!

infotex . . . we make IT work!
(an affiliate of Bucheri McCarty & Metz LLP)

Report: Form Automation

Report:
Form Automation