Most companies take their paper forms for granted. It’s understandable because they are so common any place you have registrations: kids’ programs, doctors’ offices, back to school nights, fitness classes. Paper forms are everywhere.

But what are they really costing your organization?

Too Much Time

Have you ever stopped to consider how much time your employees are spending manually managing paper forms? The typical estimate is 26 minutes per form. If a medical front office employee makes $20 an hour plus 30% overheads, each form is costing you over $11 immediately. Here is where the costs come from:

• Basic processing: It takes about 20 minutes or more – per paper form—just to copy, circulate, file, categorize and follow up on questions.
• Manual data entry: Someone must then enter the data into your management system. A fast data entry person can probably handle this in three minutes per form, but it adds up. If you don’t manually enter the data into your management system, the time lost is even more when you must find and access the form later as a physical copy.
• Illegible forms or incorrect information: Not all forms suffer from illegible handwriting, but about 30% are unreadable or have missing information. That adds an average of three more minutes per form to the entire process. And the more forms you ask your clients to fill out, the more errors occur as they try to rush through the process.

Updating Information and Security Concerns

On average, the information collected from your clients on paper forms changes by 30% or more every 3-4 months. People change insurance, they move to a new house, change jobs, get a new cell phone, kids graduate, a new medical condition occurs, and many other life events affect the accuracy of your data. The typical process is then to require all clients to update all forms every time they come in, starting the costs all over again instead of having the 30% address their updates as needed electronically.

Security risks are also high with paper forms. Typically, they are stored in file folders, cabinets, and binders – meaning it is very difficult to restrict access. What would the cost be if a single social security number, credit card account or sensitive medical information was stolen by a bad actor?

Client Frustration

Clients don’t like spending 20 minutes of their time with paper forms, either. The time spent filling out forms could be better spent servicing your clients and speeding up your service. Paper forms also makes your company look out of date. Clients and patients often complain about paper forms because of the same time and security issues mentioned above and it can make your company look like you are behind modern standards for data collection and storage. This can have a real impact on client loyalty and how willing a client is to recommend you over a more modern company or practice.

Lost Upsell Time

Some companies and practices make more money on their upsells than on the actual visit. For example, optometrists often make most of their profit on selling contacts and frames and charge less for the main consultation. If a patient comes in on their lunch hour and must spend 20 minutes filling out forms, they may not have time to even look at frames before they leave. The same holds true in other areas. Fitness clients will not have time for other services, and parents at kids’ night won’t have time to buy t-shirts. This does not affect every business, but if you haven’t considered the impact of wasted time on upsells you might be surprised how much additional revenue you are losing.

Total Costs of Paper Forms

Most companies and practices average 4-10 forms per client visit. If you have 1,000 clients fill out forms each year, you are looking at 4,000 forms or more each year. In many cases, the numbers are much higher. It is common for a single successful physician to see over 6,000 patients each year and over 30,000 forms. But even at 1,000 per year the numbers are surprising:

• 1,700 hours of staff time
• 350 hours of client time
• $44,000 in staff salary and overhead spent processing, entering and accessing forms
• Other costs associated with lost upsells, client frustration and security breaches

Add Online Forms and Links with Paperwise Symphony

Paperwise Symphony makes it easy to offer electronic forms you can share through interactive and secure links. It makes it easy to share data with your clients and allow them to save time and enter data before they arrive. It also greatly increases the accuracy of your data and eliminates nearly all the manual processing and data entry involved in forms. And with Paperwise, you will be able to quickly and securely categorize, store and access that information any time you need it.

In some cases, just replacing your paper forms can pay for your entire Paperwise Symphony system. But Paperwise Symphony also gives you the ability to take control of your entire business, connect your data, design unique workflows, enable communication and collaboration. If you would like to introduce any of these solutions into your company, please talk to our process automation experts today.