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Workflow and Digital Pen Technology

06 September 2013 | Updated 01 January 1970
 

Digital writing technology firm Anoto has announced that Team Q (a specialist in building maintenance for the likes of Jones Lang LaSalle, Savills and TfL), is digitising documents to achieve greater efficiencies in workflow and reduce data duplication.

Team Q engineers use digital pens to save almost 2,800 hours per year on paperwork it is calimed. Additionally, Team Q is using information derived from the digitised forms to carry out business analytics to further improve business efficiencies. 
In the past, Team Q engineers used paper-based forms to record engineers’ time sheets and additional workflow documents such as dynamic risk assessments and purchase orders for essential new parts. The forms were posted to head-office at the end of each week. This not only slowed down the billing process but added the risk that the forms could be misplaced or lost in transit. A quicker, electronic, means of recording and sharing information was required.

The organisation trialled PDAs but found it too cumbersome and there was still a lot of data duplication.

Team Q then turned to Anoto digital writing technology and digitised all of the seven standard forms used by its engineers on a day-to-day basis. “When we first looked for a digital solution, we didn’t get acceptance from the engineers for the PDAs as it still required a lot of data duplication and also made it necessary for the engineers to carry a cumbersome mobile printer with them, which would have required a substantial capital investment,” says Sid Newbon, operations director at Team Q. “When we trialled the digital pen solution we had a high acceptance ratio from the engineers. It allowed us to still leave a paper copy with the customer but also gave us the ability to have an instant digital copy of the form.”

The digital pens are linked to Team Q’s back-end system (Vixen from Causeway), which automates the workflow so that the company is better able to track the work carried out, as all documents and job reference numbers are linked. The digitised forms created by the Anoto digital pens can be exported into an XML file, allowing Team Q to carry out analytics on various aspects of the business. 

“We now have a fully transparent and seamless reporting system in place. In the past, engineers would send their paperwork by post to the head office and we would then have to deal with 1,000 paper forms per week,” Newbon explains. “Thanks to this digital writing solution, we now have the information from the forms sooner and can invoice our customers more efficiently. Additionally, we can use the XML format to analyse our performance and raise purchase orders for parts in a quicker fashion than before.”
anoto.com

Article written by ThisWeekinFM | Published 06 September 2013

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