Chasing Paper Waterfalls

I have always loved systems. The idea that an entire team can log into one place to get all of the information needed to make their jobs easier and more productive is exciting. I love to dig in to see what more a CRM can do to help someone who may be on the borderline of thinking their job just isn’t for them. If only this one task was easier, if only they had better data, then maybe they wouldn’t dread their day-to-day and would feel like they were bringing value to the organization. Systems can be deal breakers and makers for retention within an organization and for reaching those growth goals on the horizon. Let me give you an example.

One organization that I worked with would send a welcome packet with over 8 pieces of paper for a new recruit to fill out. EIGHT. Nothing says get excited about joining like a pile of paperwork! Once these paper forms were received an assistant would manually enter each handwritten field into the system. Each packet would take upwards of 12-15 minutes per student and this was done hundreds of times, 3 times a year. If this person wasn’t in the office, no data was received and there was no data validation or verification in place. We had to fix this!

We gathered each unit that owned each of the pieces of information gathered in the packet to sit down and first decide, do we really need this information and do we need it on Day 1? Once we organized the absolute must-haves in sequence to get this person in the door, we started seeing overlapping information, information we were asking for on different forms and there was no real way to verify that the person filling out the form was the person we needed it to be.

With some thoughtful building of online forms in logical progression with automated workflows we were on a roll! This new system was able to tell employees when information was being input, received and where stop-outs occurred, when all data was gathered. We also added an additional layer of security and verification with Docusign. We removed a huge (paper!) barrier to our success and the wondering of…are we going to get these forms back? Are they really coming? This was an internal win for our team to free up staff to work on other passion projects. It was also a win for customers to see we had our digital house in order and what their future with us looked like.

If paper is raining down on you, there is a fix out there. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Is there something about your work or a process you work on that needs a review and a change? I would love to help you work through this pile of paper and see not only time savings but also to see your business grow by allowing the systems to do the work.