Wish You Could Create Digital Forms, Automate Your Form-Dependent Workflows, and Go Paperless Once and For All? It’s Not as Difficult as It Used to Be.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of the “SAP Mobile Advisor” series now hosted on Zebra’s Your Edge blog and podcast channels. If you missed the first two posts, you can catch up here and here.

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I don’t have to tell you how much time can be wasted on manual data entry and re-entry, whether you’re managing work orders, inventory, or any other process. If you have to use forms to document the work you’ve performed and collect data and information, but you then have to re-enter everything into a business system, it’s completely redundant and inefficient. The same is true if you find yourself relying on separate, siloed business systems or multiple digital forms platforms connected to your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to manage the work and collect the data you need. You’re going to end up absorbing hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of dollars due to unnecessary redundancy and labor costs, and the risk of data entry errors is going to rise.  

In fact, my team and I were recently called into help a Fortune 1000 manufacturer for this very reason. Its leaders recently discovered they are losing as much as $1.1 million per year in wasted time, labor, and costs! The company’s production, safety and work-order processes are not fully digitized, and the data its employees are collecting isn’t automatically flowing into the backend SAP system. Sure, they have digitized some of their production, safety and work order forms, but they are still using multiple stand-alone forms applications to capture and collate data from different sources, and they have stressed to me just how difficult each of these forms applications has been to use. They have been unable to get the different standalone forms applications working together – or with their backend SAP system. Because the digitized form applications aren’t interconnected with the company’s backend SAP system, transactions are still manually keyed into the backend SAP system. As a result, business users do not have access to real-time data.  

If this sounds painfully familiar, and if you’re in a similar situation, don’t worry. You’re not alone, and there is good news: The same company is now projecting to save that $1.1 million per year because we worked with its IT leaders to find a better way to digitize all forms and enable real-time data sharing of form data with all business systems.

The software solution we came up with makes it very easy to create digital forms and digitalize and streamline data collection, information flows, and workflows – especially in SAP shops.

It’s a single platform that supports all form types, so there’s no need to piece multiple tools together to collect, aggregate, and share form data, and you don’t have to code anything to get the digitized forms or automated workflows in place. This combination enabled the manufacturer’s team to accomplish what they wanted without the frustration and expense normally incurred when trying to work around the limitations of ERPs and other monolithic business systems.

(In fact, this company isn’t the only one that will save millions of dollars by going 100% paperless using this software.)

Getting on the Fast Track to Millions in Savings

As a manufacturing entity, the company’s production, safety, maintenance and inspections require the completion of many different forms to help ensure safety, compliance, and the completion of mission-critical work. Historically, its team has used a combination of paper-based and digital forms to manage batch tracking, chemical safety tracking, lubrication routes, rounds and readings and work orders. And – as we found out after speaking with the company’s executives, IT, and operational leaders – there are several different business systems used to document and manage those workflows and related business data. There are also a number of systems used to manage end-to-end operations and risk and to perform data analytics.

For example, when we were first brought in, the company’s IT team was using five different standalone software applications to help digitize and modernize field forms, work management processes, and data collection efforts. The problem is that these applications were often difficult to use and maintain, and the IT team found it wasn’t feasible to develop SAP integrations to five disparate applications.

Both company and IT leaders say they have also experienced a lot of difficulty monitoring data and workflows for tracking and traceability given the siloed nature of these software applications, and none of the applications ultimately provide the tools or options to support every form and process.

In short, automating workflows the way business leaders were hoping has proved impossible with the original digital form software applications the IT team was trying to piece together. As a result, the company’s production, safety and maintenance teams were still completing dozens of forms on paper when we were brought in, and someone was then having to manually re-enter all that data into different business systems when the forms are submitted. No one in the company was any better off than they were before IT first started digitizing forms.

Though well-intentioned with this form digitization and workflow automation effort, the IT team and company leaders admitted in our first meeting that these changes they had first made had only created massive inefficiency and redundancy – to the tune of an estimated $710,000 in wasted labor per year! Company leaders also said that, conservatively, they were paying an estimated $450,000 per year in IT form coding, support, and related expenses.

So, when we analyzed the total business costs of manual data entry and re-entry, creating and maintaining forms, and having to use multiple applications to get substandard results, we concluded that there is a clear opportunity for $1.1 million per year in recurring annual cost savings.

Plus, we found there is the potential for an additional $300,000 in one-time savings if the manufacturer’s IT team can digitize all the company’s remaining forms with a single SAP-specific software application that would help eliminate all paper and data-entry redundancy for field and back-office teams. (Because this is an SAP shop, having something proven to plug in neatly to the SAP system is as important as having a single digital form software application that can support the whole business.)

So, my team and I are working through a thorough and approved plan with company leaders and IT to achieve many of their most important objectives:

• Consolidate all the company’s digital forms into one software application.
• Convert all remaining paper forms to digital SAP forms and processes.
• Help its workers complete work faster, more efficiently, and with fewer errors.
• Create highly efficient mobile interfaces that are more user-friendly and intuitive.
• Provide seamless connectivity between Mirata and all other business systems for real-time data flow and recording, including their backend SAP.
• Create a centralized data repository that supports documents, spreadsheets, and photos.
• Create configurable workflows to track approvals of all work and provide audit trails.
• Enable IT or other internal teams to easily create or modify forms with zero code.

I’ll let you know of the final impact once we wrap up the implementation.

In the meantime…

What You Need to Digitize Your Forms and Potentially Save Millions

As I mentioned before, there are lots of software applications that claim to digitize forms – and they technically do what they say. But digitalizing form-dependent workflows is not as simple as creating or replicating a paper-based form in a digital format. You must ensure the digital form application can speak to other systems so data captured in the form can be securely transmitted to all business systems in real time without human intervention needed. That’s not an easy feat unless the software designers specifically accounted for each business system’s unique integration requirements.

What makes integration easier?

• Opting for a no-code/zero-code tool that uses an API or native integration to connect with business systems and facilitate real-time data flows. This type of software will enable your in-house teams – or a trusted integration partner – to quickly and easily create the various digital mobile workflows you need to achieve those targeted savings.

Also ask how long, on average, it will take to…

• design a single simple form.
• design a complex form.
• design a complex workflow application.
• get the software platform integrated with each business system.
• manage the application each month or year (because it will require some oversight after the forms hit the field).

This is important because you don’t want this project to drag out for months. Nor do you want your team to have to call in outside help every time you need a new form created.

One more thing to keep in mind: your goal is to reduce the number of screens, steps, taps and clicks your team must complete to get work done. So, no matter which forms tools or other software you’re considering, put them through rigorous field testing. Confirm workers will be able to save filled form data and transactions on devices when they are offline and that the software will automatically sync inputs to your business systems the moment a wireless connection becomes available again. ake sure that the digital process is easier than the paper-based one. If it’s not, that means you probably don’t have the right digital forms software solution or it’s not configured properly yet.

So, if you’re already in that boat where you’re struggling with your current digital form software – maybe its capabilities are too limited and not able to get the job done – know there is a better way to get the digitalized process you want in place. Of course, if you’re still using paper forms, know that there’s definitely a better way to work, and the expense required to make those improvements may not be as extreme as you’re expecting.

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Editor’s Note:

If you’re currently facing challenges with forms, workflows, and getting data into your systems and would like to talk to someone who has spent decades solving problems for SAP shops, feel free to reach out to Ken and his team here.

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