Electronic forms:
examine the business processes first

Little has changed in 40 years

The first computer system I worked with was 40 years ago and it started out as a disaster.  The developers had put all their effort into the computer system logic and programming, and in those distant times with programming in machine language and data entry by manually punched cards, errors were expensive to correct. But the developers overlooked the most important factor in their system—the people. But that was not the only computer disaster. As the years wore on, I experienced failure after failure as computer professionals continued to put the machine ahead of people. As unbelievable as it may sound, I’ve seen more system failures than successes in a wide range of organisations. You only have to regularly read the IT pages of major business newspapers such as the Australian Financial Review to see the extent of failed systems.

I’m not knocking computers, modern technology or computer people in general. Modern technology is wonderful and I love what we can do today compared to what was available even five years ago. But there’s both good and bad practice and unfortunately, my experience after 40 years has been that there’s still a lot of bad practice. In 1975, British author and computer lecturer Keith London, described computer systems in his book The People Side of Systems¹. 

“Programmers often see an organisation in black and white: the nuts and bolts of document flow, clearly defined file data element characteristics, precise logical program branches, rigid computer operations schedules. The very nature of the computer itself requires that a program be specified in precise, formal terms. He is, in his everyday work, seeing only the formalized tip of an iceberg. If such a programmer becomes a systems analyst, he would now investigate and analyse. If he were to maintain his mechanistic perception of a system, his work would be doomed to failure. For he would still see only the tip of the iceberg of the formal procedures and data. The bulk of the iceberg in systems terms is the people, their jobs and their attitudes.”

Even now, 30 years years after Keith London wrote, many system developers still make the same mistakes, failing to consider the people and the way they work with the business system. I wish this was an isolated case, but long and continuing experience has proven otherwise.

An important lesson

When I was being introduced to business systems, I learned a very important lesson—fix the business processes first and then add the computer. Michael Hammer and James Champy², in their book Reengineering the Corporation, give the example of IBM Credit:

“in trying to automate its operations…managed only to immortalize a bad process by committing it to computer software, making it even more difficult to alter in the future.”

If you computerise a bad system, all you do is make the problems occur faster.

My first involvement in good computer input form design was in 1979 when I was asked to work with the South Australian Police. Their approach was radically different to what I had previously encountered. Instead of being given an input layout prepared by a programmer and told to get on with the design, I was handed a copy of the draft system specifications. The result was that I was able to point out where some of the input requirements were going to cause problems for the users. This led to the development of a new data entry concept for the project followed by the design of the draft forms and procedures before the real programming took place. Once the designs were worked out and checked with potential users, the programming commenced and the system was implemented very smoothly.

An important point about business process and electronic forms software was made by Bruce Silver³ in his 2003 Industry Trends Report on Forms Management.

“Vendor consolidation is occurring throughout the software industry, as special-purpose software is absorbed into broader technology platforms. Forms Management is no exception. As standalone print-and-fill and fill-and-print usage has declined, leading vendors of Forms Management technology have been acquired by much larger companies in the Enterprise Content Management space. For example, in the past couple years, Jetform (renamed Accelio) was acquired by Adobe, and Shana was acquired by FileNet [and subsequently acquired by IBM - RB]. Electronic forms today are thus best viewed as an important component of a corporate content management or business process management platform, rather than as a separate technology.”

While business process analysis has always been a key target of professional forms analysts, the need is now even greater. We now have the technology to electronically process much of the document content of organisations, not just the documents themselves. The more we look at records management, document management, content management and knowledge management, the more we find that these processes are driven by forms. More and more, we’re finding that it’s the forms that drive the process. Bruce Silver’s report concludes with an important summary of where electronic forms technology is headed.

“Once offered as a standalone tool, Forms Management today is increasingly required to provide enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM) functionality. Replicating such functionality already provided in ECM/BPM infrastructure doesn’t really make sense. This suggests that Forms Management technology from leading vendors is becoming a new component of that infrastructure, finally bridging the worlds of paper and digital business processes.”

While there is some superb technology that is bridging these worlds, much of the current records and document management software ignores this important functionality. In examining the need for electronic forms, organisations need to consider integration with the whole workflow and content management process, not just the forms in isolation.

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1 London, Keith (1975). The People Side of Systems. London: McGraw Hill.

2 Hammer, Michael and Champy, James (1993) Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

3 Silver, Bruce (2003). Forms Management Report, Industry Trends Report November 2003. Bruce Silver Associates.

This article is based on Chapter 34 of the author’s book Forms For People. 

©  2008 Robert Barnett