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How to Boost Productivity and Streamline Workflows with Online Forms

Heather Mueller
February 7, 2017
|
Min Read

No matter what industry you serve or which department you work in, there's one challenge that affects us all:The never-ending to-do list.Despite our many attempts to boost productivity, most efforts to streamline workflows fall flat. Managers still devote 40% of their time to administrative tasks, and office workers spend more than four hours a day buried in email.No wonder it’s so hard to get things done.Or is it?One survey found that people who say they work 75 hours a week overestimate by an average of 25 hours. Another study (cited here) found that the common habit of multitasking increases the time it takes to complete a single task by 25%.In other words…When it comes to being less busy, we’re often our own worst enemies.Which is completely preventable, considering we’re working in the era of automation. There’s simply no reason to slave over routine tasks. If you’re ready to dig yourself—and your company—out of a cycle of unproductivity once and for all, it’s time to streamline business processes with automated workflows.That’s precisely what a drag-and-drop web form builder is designed to help you do.The following online forms can be used organization-wide to cut down on administrative work and free staff to focus on more essential endeavors. With features like Approvals, Email Logic, and Conditional Logic, these web forms improve efficiency and boost productivity for everyone.

Finalize Reimbursement Requests in Seconds

Does a typical workweek involve submitting or sorting through dozens of reimbursement requests? An expense reimbursement form can shave hours of time from those activities. After initial setup, it takes mere seconds for employees to submit requests and for finance teams to approve them—in one click, right from within their inboxes.

Create Customer Contracts in Minutes

How much of your revenue relies on new business? And how much time does staff spend customizing a template or filling in blanks with each new customer contract?At Select Security, a fast-growing Inc. 5000 company, the answer was “a lot.”The same was true at Twinings, where a single request would trigger a two-day business process involving sales approvals, background checks, and financial reviews.That all changed when these companies began using online forms to collect customer information and automatically route it to the correct staff. The move has essentially eliminated numerous to-do lists of countless recurring tasks. (See how they did it here and here.)

Shave Hours from Project Proposals, Requests, and Updates

Do you (or does your supervisor) view recurring status updates and project proposals as an obligatory part of the workweek? Did you know that extraneous recurring meetings have been shown to cost companies as much as 300,000 hours and $300 million a year?If that doesn’t make you want to scrap your daily standup or formal review process, I don’t know what will.The only problem? Meeting or no meeting, team members need to stay updated on projects and progress to remain productive. And that’s where project management forms come in.With a project proposal form, for instance, employees can conveniently submit and review ideas as they come. There’s no need to pull someone away from work or break concentration. Talk about an efficiency boost!

Even More Ways to Streamline Business Processes...

These three examples are just the beginning. Think of a routine business process, and there’s bound to be a way to automate it with an online form. Formstack users have systemized everything from PTO requests to equipment logs.

Are you ready to streamline workflows at your organization? Click the link below to see how you can boost productivity and save hours with Formstack.

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Heather Mueller
Heather is a website copywriter and digital content strategist who loves helping brands generate leads through the power of the written word—especially when using Formstack. Connect with Heather on Twitter @heathermueller.
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