For decades, companies have been doing various kinds of inspection using paper forms together with pen and clipboard. Then, in today’s digital era we have replaced paper forms and do inspection in a more efficient way with the help of technology and eventually change our way of working with digital forms.
The reason why we need to change is that after decades of the existence of paper form, it still brings some problems to the user that may bring chaos to the whole inspection process flow. Moreover, there are still companies that using paper forms to do the whole process despite of the difficulties it has.
Paper Forms is Inefficient
Doing inspection using paper forms will not only require your staff to complete the forms, but they also have to type the information collected into spreadsheet, report, or workflow system. Companies may facing duplication of labor where one person will complete the inspection and another staff will do the data entry. This staff could be better using his time on another task or inspect another area than doing data entry. Imagine how inefficient it is.
Paper Forms is Inconsistent
Let’s say there is a problem while doing an inspection. There’s a high chance that a same problem is described in many ways because various words that can be used to describe the problem. For example, an inspector may say sprinkle when another may say spatter. There can be various meaning and possibility of miscommunication because there’s no standard of describing a problem.
Paper Forms is Illegible
Together with paper forms you will use pen to fill your inspection forms. So that the quality of information you have gathered relied on the accuracy of the handwriting. However, it’s not only the matter of handwriting. Sometimes the ink might run because of the weather or accidentally getting splashed by water and using clipboard might cause a scratch on the paper forms. It’s easy for errors to creep in when record the data and make it inaccurate.
Paper Forms is Easy to be Lost
Paper forms will move a lot when you do inspection. From staff in charge of the inspection to the supervisor, manager, or file cabinet. The inspection forms that supposed to be reported can be lost during the moving time of the paper forms and it may be difficult to find it. Moreover, you may need the data from previous reports but it’s hard to trace the forms which have been saved in the file cabinet and the data become unavailable or inaccurate.
The existence of these problems can affect the entire process and make it inefficient by letting in may errors in the filling, recording, or even reporting. Companies also have to deal with additional cost of labor duplication and sacrifice their times on searching the lost form. The best way to deal with these problems is to change paper form with digital form.
There’s no need of data entry because the form you’re filling will be automatically recorded in the system. The data submitted will be more accurate and reliable because digital form can reduce the possibility of errors in filling or writing forms. Drop-down menus are provided so that inspection staff can describe the similar problem in the same way.
Furthermore, you don’t have to worry about losing a form. It’s not a paper forms that are moving around but digital forms in a cloud platform that are easy to track and backed up regularly.
Many form solution platforms provide inspection form for enterprise. Even so, you may take a look at AdeptForms which can help you not only to build form but customize it based on your needs.
Check out at our offering and contact us to request demo.