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

Electronic forms: a warning from the past

Designing a public-use form involves a lot more analysis than what you would often need for an in-house form. In 1994, the theme for the Business Forms Management Association’s Annual Symposium was ‘Technology Transforms Tradition’. Yet how often have we found ourselves overcome and bound by both technology and tradition?

From the time when Gutenberg printed the first Western business form in 1454, form design has more often than not been driven by the technology of the day. Technology, having set the standard, drives the tradition. So when the technological constraints of letterpress printing made it difficult to get ruled lines to join at the corners of boxes, it became tradition to leave off the vertical lines at the ends. The technology has changed, but the tradition of open-ended boxes remains. It seems that it doesn’t matter if this makes the form more difficult to use—tradition dominates. 

When the technological constraints of 80 column punched card computing made it imperative to use character separators, it became tradition to use boxes and combs. The technology has changed, but the tradition of comb delimiters remains.

Form design should be driven by user need—not technology or tradition. If we’re not careful, the burdens of the past will be on us again and we’ll have our electronic forms hamstrung by the developers of technology.

We need to remember these lessons as more of our forms become electronic. If many software developers had their way, paper forms wouldn’t exist.  We’re finding that administrators and governments are constantly pushing the idea that all forms should be on the Internet, but with little thought about whether that’s the best way to go; little thought about the limitations of current Internet technology or even whether people are prepared to use forms that way. We’re getting an increasing number of reports from government sources that while some people love to use their computers, many members of the public are objecting to electronic forms.

I’m not suggesting that electronic forms are bad—after all, most of the forms our company uses are electronic—but I am suggesting that you need to use them wisely. You need to put people first, and that includes internal staff as well as the public. You need an holistic approach, taking all factors into consideration—human psychological needs, user literacy, ergonomics, efficiency and corporate productivity, work flow (both paper and electronic), reliability of captured data, information accessibility, and much more.

Many managers throw technology at their problems like a person giving aspirin to someone with a brain tumour. To solve business problems you need to know what the real problem is and then find the cause. Then, maybe—just maybe—technology might help to provide an optimum solution. Many years ago I learned that computerising a bad system doesn’t improve productivity. With electronic forms, the issue is even more critical since you are dealing with the primary tool of trade of a large proportion of the work force—the business form. Don’t just convert paper forms to electronic format for the sake of using technology.

An often-repeated prophecy

In 1969, trainees at the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac Banking Corporation) were told that they had to prepare for change. By the mid 1970’s they would have a paperless office. This was an often-repeated prophecy in those not-so-distant times. How frequently did we attend lectures and read articles by ‘experts’ that told us how technology would take over most routine business tasks. We were even told that we needed to be ready for times of leisure—that by the 1980’s, technology would have advanced so far and taken over so much of our routine work that we would only be working 3 or 4 days a week.

But by the mid 1970’s I was predicting that the ‘paperless office’ wouldn’t happen as others were saying. And it didn’t! These predictions weren’t based on any special revelation. I just knew the way people worked—I knew that the ‘experts’ didn’t understand the users. I wasn’t the only one—many other writers were talking about the same thing, but the technology promoters didn’t listen.

If computer systems are to be effective, analysts must design them for people first and this hasn’t happened. Computer systems have reduced paper and improved productivity in some areas. But here we are, many years down the line, and even though the developers of content management and document management software are heavily promoting their solutions, we still don’t have even a semblance of a ‘paperless office’.

Hardware has been a significant problem and, to some extent, still is. Computer monitors are still often far too small for effective business use and easy reading. 

Early 21st Century

As we move further into the 21st Century we’ll see technology continue to change rapidly. Electronic forms on the Internet (and internally on intranets) are now feasible. We’re seeing more and more electronic forms software that enables forms to be completed easily in a web browser while retaining the look and feel of desktop-based forms. However, there are still serious limitations imposed by the constraints of web software and this is limiting what can be done.

Basic electronic forms can use electronic mail to send the form to an intermediate party for authorisation or to move data to and from a database. More sophisticated systems include workflow rules that can automatically make routing decisions for the user by examining the rules established for the particular form along with the data entered. Some electronic forms software developers such as IBM are now providing software that allows forms routing to be drawn graphically.

But all this wonderful technology loses its impact and advantage if the people that use the system are overlooked or their needs given low priority.

This article is taken from Chapter 31 of Forms For People.

Additional reading

We have a separate publication listing books and articles on forms and related subjects that is available from our website.

©  2008 Robert Barnett

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