Productivity is not about doing a lot of things. It’s about getting quality work done with minimum effort.
Form automation is all about working smarter, not harder. Just set up the automated form processing once and watch it take care of everything for you.
And more than increasing productivity by better allocation of time and resources, form automation can boost efficiency as well.
Actually, automated form processing can kickstart a whole series of task automation.
From a single automated form, for instance, it can automatically generate another document automation filled by form submission data. And all the while assuring accuracy too since it eliminates human error.
We’ll go over the benefits of automated form processing and some of its advanced possibilities. After the what and the why, we’ll tell you HOW can you achieve a higher level of productivity with MightyForms features for form automation.
When Should You Start Automated Form Processing?
If your business is fairly new or small and you think the volume of work is not that much to bother to set up an automated form processing, you better reconsider.
The best time to start automating your processes was yesterday!
Almost every business interaction, whether a query, a purchase, or a service request, begins with a form.
Think about it, if form automation and document automation is easy and accessible to get arranged, why wait to start when things get out of hand?
The sooner you establish automated form processing from the get-go, the better your business will be ready for increased demand, growth, and scalability.
And if this concept is a bit abstract, let’s grasp some facts:
- 45% of business tasks can already be automated by existing technology (source: McKinsey)
- $140 billion in productivity gains and savings can be reached by 2025 simply by automating financial services (source: Accenture)
- 69% of all managerial work can be automated by 2024 (source: Gartner)
- 10 to 50% of costs and time can be saved by automating manual processing (source: Salesforce)
- 66% of companies see a revenue increase by automating workflows (source: McKinsey)
- 50% of employee’s time is spent on manually searching for documents (source: TechRepublic)
What exactly is Form Automation then?
You see, it is not enough to download a free form template or document and provide that to your audience. That’s just a paperless process, but it won’t be automated.
If you need to copy and paste form submission to a document, that’s not automation. Worse yet, if your respondents have to keep typing up repetitive information, that’s not automation AND bad customer experience.
A truly automated form processing follows the “if this, then that” scheme to respond to input and trigger the next action by itself.
From automated form filling, automatic notifications and confirmation messages, document automation to even applying AI to tell you how to improve the form. The automation possibilities are up to you.
No need to refrain from going all out if you fear it will be a complex process. When you create and automate your form with a no-code form builder like MightyForms, it’s all a matter of enabling settings that will work for your business model.
Yes, automated form processing has to be tailored to your needs. The outcome must be a custom document automation setup. A generic arrangement might backfire and you’ll end up wasting more time adjusting it.
Well-planned form automation employing the right resources will make customer intake work like a conveyor belt system.
Benefits of Form Automation
So, if forms trigger most business operations, it makes sense to nip in the bud the source of time-consuming and repetitive tasks. Therefore, form automation can do wonders for productivity and efficiency.
Money and time savings are the undisputed main benefits of switching manual to automated form processing.
But let us not overlook some of the not-so-obvious benefits as well, especially when you take full advantage of advanced features offered by a proper form builder like MightyForms:
✔ Enhanced Customer Experience
Automated forms are set up to only show relevant questions, pre-fill info available, or save the progress if needed. It’s all about valuing your respondent’s time.
✔ Ensured Accuracy
When you automatically export form data to another platform for document automation or further action, you can bet that you’ll get it exactly as it was submitted.
✔ Added Security
Securing respondent’s personal and financial data is not an issue with automated form processing. Besides, you can enable anti-bot verification to keep spammers away.
✔ Optimized Response Time
Waste no time at fulfilling order requests or handling any incoming complaint. Form automation can be enabled to notify you of each new submission for faster follow-up.
✔ Improved Employee Satisfaction
By sparing your staff from doing manual repetitive tasks, they’ll be available to contribute with more creative and meaningful work. Form automation takes care of boring tasks.
How Automated Form Processing Works with MightyForms
We promised you that automated form processing is easy to have established with a no-code form builder.
Whether you’re in charge of school admissions; handling contracts for an insurance company; managing registrations for a conference; or even selling real estate properties, we know that there are several documents that must be filled out, signed, approved, and archived.
An automated form processing will collect the right information and signatures, then automatically carry out the workflow till completion.
Here’s how you can set up the form automation to maximize your productivity in two steps:
Step 1. Create a Form
MightyForms provides several customizable templates that cater to every industry and business needs as a head start. You can also create your form from scratch by dragging and dropping the fields you want from the toolbox.
Then style the form as you like. Select the color scheme and fonts. Shuffle fields around to find out the best layout and then preview how it would look on any device.
Step 2. Enabling Automation Options
You can first map out what you need to process and which steps you would like to have automated. Make sure you also explore all features, functionalities, and integrations (detailed ahead) to discover form automation solutions you had no idea that could be done.
The advanced settings and integrations can be found on the side menu of the builder’s dashboard. Some advanced settings can also be enabled for a specific form field. For integration with other platforms, simply authorize the connection to your account.
Form Automation Solutions
Once you see your form automation working as an autonomous well-oiled machine, you’ll wish to have done it sooner.
There’s no downtime with form automation. Simply arrange the settings and the automated form processing will work during weekends, over the holidays, 24/7.
MightyForms offers form automation solutions for all your needs and might introduce you to new tricks to take it to the next level. Check them out:
Conditional Forms
Automated forms can reduce form abandonment caused by lengthy forms or non-applicable questions. The Logic Rules feature automatically improves form flow for a friendlier experience. You can define what the next questions should be according to previous answers so irrelevant fields are not even shown.
Furthermore, if you’re collecting payments or providing a service quote, Logic Rules can be enabled to automatically calculate prices in order to show the total cost.
But perhaps the most clever thing Logic Rules can do is to screen form submissions for you AND notify the right team member to handle it. Qualifying incoming submissions is a very time-consuming task and this form automation solution instantly takes care of it.
Personalization
Personalization not only enhances the customer experience but it makes half of the consumers spend more! The Recall feature was designed to automate personalization during the process.
By enabling this feature in the advanced settings of the ‘Name’ form field, the following questions will call respondents by their name. Even though it’s an automated form processing, it can still have that human touch to carry on a conversational tone into your form intake.
Automated Form Filling
So, we took care of form length with Logic Rules, but MightyForms has additional features to keep respondents from typing up repetitive information. Automated form filling solutions reduce the time it takes to fill out your form and also encourage more submissions.
For instance, you can switch the Google Places Autocomplete ON in the advanced settings of the ‘Address’ field. Whenever respondents start to type in the address, this feature will predict possible locations in order to autocomplete this field.
But if you really want to impress your audience by being extra helpful – and automated – you can set up our Field Keys feature to pre-populate forms. This automated form filling solution will retrieve information from previous forms or forms from another app to automatically fill out name, email address, and phone number fields, for instance.
And if you want to allow respondents to repeat the same fields, you can enable the Duplicate Steps feature. This option is very convenient for registering multiple guests to an event or to fill out a job application form with many school and work experience entries, for example.
Signable PDF Forms
If you thought document automation would end at having it signed, well, MightyForms got that covered too. Easily add a Signature Field to your form to collect signatures from respondents.
You can choose which type of signature to accept: drawn in, typed, or uploaded. Rest assured that all of those e-signature types are legally binding in the US by the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce (ESIGN) Act of 2000.
More than convenient, signable automated forms help save trees! By not having documents printed in order to be signed (and then scanned), eliminates paper waste and reduces your company’s carbon footprint. And if focusing on ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) wasn’t enough, it saves money too since it may cost up to $20 to file a single paper document.
PDF Solutions
This article wouldn’t be about document automation if we didn’t mention PDF solutions. The acronym itself, Portable Document Format, hints that this file format is a match made in heavens for form automation.
Accept uploaded PDFs
First of all, you can accept PDF files as an attachment to your form submissions. This makes it easier to attach a resumé for job applications or a birth certificate for health insurance, for example.
If you want to keep a copy of every submission as a PDF file, this process can be easily automated as well. Either set up an automatic email notification to yourself (or anyone else) for each new submission as a PDF copy attached or export all form submissions at once as PDF from the MightyForms Results dashboard.
Fill in existing PDF documents
In case you need to use form submission data to come up with several other documents, like a new hire process, no need for copy and paste. Simply integrate your form to Zapier to have pdfFiller safely transfer the data to an existing fillable document.
Another PDF solution is to automatically transform input from form submissions to create other PDF files, like an image file or even a barcode (great for event tickets). This can be done automatically through Zapier to connect form submissions to PDF.co converter.
And, of course, if you need more complex PDF solutions, there’s always the Enterprise plan.
Success Messages
We’ve mentioned how you can set up an automatic notification of new form submission to you or anyone else in your team. But MightyForms makes it easy for you to set up a success message to respondents as well.
Automatic success messages, also known as confirming messages, can be set up to pop up after respondents hit on the ‘Submit’ button, to assure them their input was well received.
But to leverage automated form processing further, take advantage of the customization option of our success messages. You can edit the message to thank them for their business, to tell them of the next steps or how long it takes for a callback, to welcome them on board, or even redirect them to another page.
You can make them as dynamic as you want, with images, videos, or gifs. A custom personalized success message builds loyalty and promotes brand awareness. And yet, easily automated so you can check that off your to-do list.
Data Backup & Remote Access
Automated form processing is not only convenient, but it’s safe. Physical storage for archiving your business documents can be damaged and not easily shareable. Whereas with document automation, you can have it stored in cloud services for an additional backup and for easy remote access.
You can integrate form submissions and export data directly to your Google Sheets, Google Drive, and Dropbox accounts. For further CRM steps, automatically integrate forms to other platforms like Pipedrive, Salesforce, or Clio Grow.
And if you need a specific integration other than MightyForms native integrations to handle your document automation, you can use Zapier or Webhooks to connect form submissions to other platforms.
Form Tracking
It wouldn’t be a complete automated form processing if you had to monitor it and keep an eye on it, would it? Every form by MightyForms is fully trackable by default, even the abandoned ones.
The Abandoned Form Recovery feature retains any input given instantly, as forms are being filled out, so you can have a chance at checking in with those respondents. This analytical tool also suggests form improvement to quickly fix issues causing form abandonment.
And in order to automatically collect user behavior, you can count on Form Reports & Analytics. Getting a full overview of your automated form processing lets you get acquainted with your audience and get insights to keep it efficient.
Automated Form Processing with the right tools and proper settings can maximize productivity level towards business growth. It definitely eliminates waste of resources, whether it’s time, money, paper, or talent. Better yet, it is an ever-evolving and custom process, so it will always guide you to new ways to keep work quality high. Get started with the latest form automation solutions by MightyForms!
