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Preempting paper, or Capturing data at the clipboard
October 12, 2011
We’re heavily focused on eliminating the paper in our office owing to the obvious improvements in security, usability (or perhaps more aptly, versatility), redundancy, and the list can go on in a lengthy series of ul and li tags (remember, were listing electronically.)
So the benefits have been proven. As new technology is launched, speedy ROIs have rocketed the electronic age into the great blue skies (and clouds) of better business processes, and the payload carried is greater efficiency and an increased scope of business. We can now do more business in than we ever have, and oftentimes with much less overhead.
Get ready for the next rocketship.
Historically, eliminating paper constitutes a change of process.
Paper is engrained into our workflow. It’s comfortable, familiar, and thus, the standard for record-keeping and documentation in business. The advent of email has gone a long way to ease us out of the practice of writing memos or leaving voicemails, but email had all the requisites that would forgo, essentially, the need to convert users in the first place. It isn’t wasn’t a hard sell because the transition was so necessary.
However, when looking to move a greater share of our business to electronic format, it requires a whole new set of standards with regard to our business environment, and even our culture as a whole. Human beings still have a great love for tangible items like paper. Even those who embrace the ones and zeros that have become the new atoms of data structure, occasionally opt for a printed read or a photograph in hand.
The good news is that we are steadily bringing the electronic processes into our businesses where they make sense and where they enable us to do business better. We are scanning backfile documents to free up space in our offices. We are installing sophisticated security- and mobility-friendly systems that are truly making an impact on the paper that moves through, lingers in, or rests interminably amidst our workspace.
Great advancements are being made in handling paper documents once they’re generated, and much of it has been done with great hesitation and trepidation due to the acclimation required, even though the results are frequently quite favorable.
A new process, however, with process familiarity
“Once it’s generated” is the key phrase on which we now need to focus. We’re bringing forms into our workflow at an incredible rate and, while much has been done to port applications, requisitions, and other forms to an online submission environment, there are still task workers, consumers, patients, applicants, and scores of others who routinely write information inside little boxes printed on paper affixed to a clipboard.
Even if the documents are brought immediately to be scanned, the images still have to be reviewed (and corrected, if necessary) and indexed, and the paper has to be disposed of or stored. Hopefully, with such a short life cycle, proper measures are being taken to print on recycled paper and, once complete, that life cycle ends again in a recycle bin.
But the use of paper forms to collect data only to have it digitized is a problem. But can it be fixed without inciting resistance to a new way of doing things?
Look to electronic clipboards to accomplish this, complete with minimal upset to our habitual conventions. Tablets will enable us to collect data from remote locations, serving to the device only the forms that are required for a task and narrowing the scope of use so that the task is never delayed. Consider some of the features and benefits that are afforded by a well-designed electronic tablet:
- Using a stylus with a natural pencil-to-paper feel so that freeform data can be captured
- An electronic eraser to remove marks or errors without degrading or dirtying the form
- Support for drop down menus, check boxes, and other necessary structured data forms
- One-click submission to a prescribed location (email, file server, etc)
- Tracking duration of form completion
Imagine not needing to wait for a driver to return from the road to view the reports that were generated, or being able to sort through structured data immediately after a client submits a form. And then consider the time and money that is wasted in not having that ability. It now becomes a very easy concept to capture.