I recently ran into an interesting requirement from a customer. Company X regularly sends letters to their clients looking for feedback on orders placed. Currently, their process works like this: the customer receives a feedback form; he or she fills out the form responses; and then the feedback is returned to Company X. Either the customer prints and scans the responses, sending a fax or email to Company X, or he or she mails back the printed version. Regardless, the process is an ineffecient way of capturing customer feedback. Finally, once a response document is received, the form responses are hand-entered into the database system by data entry clerks.

On the plus side, Company X sends the documents in PDF format which saves paper and speeds response time. However, PDF files do not contain a mechanism that allows customers to simply respond to questions and click a button to submit answers. Of course they could attempt to use fillable PDF files, but that still requires a manual step to print and email or fax a response.

When I saw the business requirements Company X was asking for, I immediately knew our WebForms product would be a perfect solution.

Here’s how I envision the process working: The customer changes their document generation process to utilize a web form document instead of a PDF file. A web form is simply an XML data file that gets published on the RJS WebForms Server. Once created, a unique dissolvable link is sent to the end-user so they can click on the link and enter their individualized responses on the web form. Once completed, they simply submit the feedback form back to Company X. That’s it. No printing, no scanning, no email replies, no faxing. Immediately upon submission, the RJS WebForms server interprets the form, updates the designated IBM i or SQL Server database with the responses and deletes or dissolves the unique web form as it’s no longer needed.

Does this scenario sound familiar? If you are trying to improve two way communications with your customers while reducing or eliminating data entry bottlenecks, contact us to see how WebForms can help streamline your customer and vendor business processes.