Digital Forms Can Prepare Your Business for the New Year
Resolve to streamline your business with digital forms in 2023
By now you’ve heard the phrase “New Year, New Me” at least a time or two, but have you started thinking about ways to apply that theory to your business? Whether you had a record-breaking year or you missed your company goals like a freshman-level kicker, it’s always a good idea to strategize for the coming year. Take a few moments to think about what worked, and investigate what worked well for your competitors. Keep in mind, it isn’t all about business policies, it’s also about which technologies you’re incorporating into your day-to-day work.
Exploring new technologies for the new year can help give your business, and your employees, a competitive edge. While specialized platforms, like a digital inventory system, can focus on streamlining specific aspects of your business, a broad-application system like digital forms can help in multiple ways. If you haven’t considered moving from paper to online forms, it’s time for your team to enter the modern era of data capture.
Be Prepared for Audits
Digital forms and data capture can support a smooth and surprise-free audit season. As the beginning of the year, and the tax quarter, rolls around, you may already be exploring new options to keep your data in place. Online forms give you the ability to capture your data seamlessly, keep it all in a secure place, and keep a detailed audit trail of every business transaction. With an average of one in 100 businesses getting audited by the IRS each year, it may not seem like a great risk, but when it comes to audits, the only good risk is no risk.
One of the best ways to prepare yourself for an audit is to make sure that you’re carefully tracking all of your income and expenses appropriately. But when it comes to paper and spreadsheets, that data can get messy quickly. If you’re using a digital forms platform that integrates with your accounting software, you can easily track exactly what you’re billing your customers for, while also keeping track of the daily business expenditures. From timesheets to payroll to invoices, digital forms give you the ability to account for each cent going in and out of your business.
Capture Better Data
If better data capture isn’t on your New Year’s resolutions list, it should be. Fast and reliable data capture isn’t just a rising trend, it’s key to ensuring your business is prepared to address the ongoing digital transformation happening everywhere. In part thanks to the pandemic in 2020, businesses everywhere are realizing the importance of reliable technology, and the ability to digitize their documents. A recent Forrester Consulting study found that the top five initiatives and technologies for businesses to remain competitive in their industry included leveraging better data analytics, migrating business transactions to the cloud, and adopting digital document processes.
“Respondents from organizations with no digital document processes report 10x more at-risk customers and 2x more at-risk revenue than those from other companies.”
While digital documents in the form of PDFs may seem like a step in the right direction, it’s not the full leap to digitizing your data entirely. PDFs still require manual translation of data from the document to your business platforms. Online forms, however, automate the data entry for you and remove the risk of manual errors entirely, while also saving your team time. Imagine the possibilities of where your team can focus their efforts and creative thinking if manual data entry is removed from their to-do lists! Data can make your business run better, help you make informed business decisions, and better predict trends for the future - don’t slow don’t those beneficial insights with tedious manual processes.
Customer data may always feel like the most important data you can capture, but digital forms can give you insight into more aspects of your business than just sales. Implementing anonymous employee satisfaction surveys can help you measure how engaged your employees are while switching over to a digital employee evaluation form can mean more streamlined goal-setting and annual reviews for your team. Using site safety or cleaning checklists can keep you informed on how stringent industry codes are being followed, while also keeping a record of jobsite responsibilities for your employees. Data is king in every industry, so don’t hesitate to capture it from both external and internal sources.
Take Control Over Your Expenses
If you’ve been running some of the same business processes for a while, it’s easy for some of those expenses to fade into the background—but make no mistake, those costs add up. When was the last time you reviewed what you were spending on your printing costs, including paper, ink, storage, and shipping or courier charges? Now imagine your business grows at your projected goal rate, how much will you have to increase your spending on those items? Switching to a digital format not only gives your business the ability to scale seamlessly it also cuts down on the rising costs of those outdated processes.
“For several decades, the demand for paper and the prices had remained relatively flat. We saw a few increases here and there that didn’t affect pricing in a major way, but what we’ve seen over the past two years is pricing for the wood pulp used to make paper has increased roughly 40 percent, which is huge. And I think it’ll stay there for good unless there is some new technology or more infrastructure is built to accommodate the demand.”
In some industries, it’s also not just about the expense of your spending, it’s about the expense of your reputation. From a more environmentally friendly approach to running your business, to streamlining your processes for a better customer experience, the cost of using paper processes can really add up. Digital forms mean that you can exchange important documents with your customers immediately, and even get real-time feedback on job and order status. Doing so with a minimized impact on the environment through less paper waste not only bolsters your customers’ experience with your customer, it can help boost your reputation as well. With sustainability rated as an important factor when making purchasing decisions for 60% of consumers globally, it’s a change worth making for your business’s bottom line.
Online forms with specific applications can also help you take control of other areas of your business expenses as well. For example, digital timesheet templates give you the ability to review and approve timesheets - especially those with overtime hours logged - before they go through to payroll. For service-based industries, your digital forms can also present automated tipping calculations to your customers, encouraging them to tip your team appropriately. These changes may seem small, but can give you an even better insight into your business, and show additional support for your employees doing their best work for the company.
This year, make it a point to migrate away from pen and paper and embrace digital forms. Not only will you be better equipped to handle online transactions, pull in more resumes from qualified online candidates, and rest assured that you’re ready to handle any audits, but you’ll also be taking better control of your business. Make 2023 the year for your business to embrace a digital transformation with online forms and data capture.
About GoFormz
Whether your HR team needs a digital form for faster application processing, or your remodeling business needs forms for construction permits, and everything in between, GoFormz is your digital form solution. With a completely flexible, no-code-required form builder and proprietary technology to digitize an exact replica of your existing paper forms, there’s no challenge GoFormz can’t conquer. Bring your business processes to new heights in the new year with GoFormz.
