Should You Use Paper Forms or Digital Forms?
or Email or Microsoft form or google forms?
History of paper forms could be 100 years ago, and paper forms are the core in office productivity. It might be hard to create a copy of a document by handwriting every time about the content. Paper forms improved productivity by giving instructions and directions to guide users to write in their information. however. if you have an order or request to send out today, there are more than just data recorded and share, there are non-digital decision processes behind and a non-digital operation workflow to follow.
here Today, we then have a digital form or even an interactive one to work with.
If you are already familiar with using paper forms, you might ask why you should use digital forms.
Let’s take a look at some advantages or disadvantages of using paper forms.
In many companies, paper forms are normal and “by default”.
But for now, in particular, Hong Kong or under the pandemic, do the pros outweigh the cons for switching from paper to digital?
The Pros
Paper forms do not require any electricity or devices or the Internet. If you have a pen in hand, you will be OK!
The form can be easily passed to someone to fill in and someone to collect and approve at a very low cost.
Printer and photocopiers have made them cheap to produce.
But how about if face-to-face, pen, or even copies are not ready?
For many years, shortcomings of using paper are obvious even we are all educated to write and read.
Bad quality of data filled in, lost and damages or attachment of supplementary information are causing costly remedy actions.
Other important issues nowadays are business-automation, Big Data, and compliances. These issues make the paper even more costly to process. For example, a single paper form may need to be reviewed by multiple departments, especially if approvals are involved.
In the last five years, with the support of smartphones, a digital mobile form becomes more convenient than ever.
No matter it is a form on a website or a form inside your APP, it will be right next to you all the time.
So why you are still spending limited office areas to keep paper instead of digital forms?
Start your admin and HR digitalization today.
We will continue to discuss more digital forms next time in Big Data Admin.