How to Continue to Promote Success with your Remote Teams

Your organization likely settled into your new normal of working from home, and as offices reopen and some employees choose to remain working from home, cultivating and maintaining a successful strategy to continue to manage your teams across multiple locations is key. After seeing the success of adapting to remote work, many organizations are making the decision to give their employees a more flexible office schedule, and some are moving to remote work entirely.

We previously covered some basic tips to assist companies in creating their remote work strategy, today we’ll highlight some specific processes that can be transformed to best support remote employees, or allow for a flexible workplace with employees both at home or in the office.

Hiring and Onboarding

Your organization may be in a place where you can hire new employees to manage new tasks that have come up as a result of increased demand or shifting focuses, particularly within spaces such as manufacturing. If you’re hiring for employees in your facility but have a Human Resources team that is remote, coordinating the necessary paperwork and tasks required for hiring and onboarding can be incredibly difficult without relying on an automation solution.

With Document Management and Automation, you can build a hiring workflow of forms to send to each new hire, including common forms such as I-9s, benefits enrollment, background checks, and other employee documents and manuals. By building a workflow within DocStar, each completed form can be routed to the correct manager, who can review, approve, and then file it to the appropriate employee file, all without needing to physically be in the office. This can be also particularly useful in cases where your new employee will be remote from day 1.

By innovating your current hiring and onboarding process, you can stand out as a competitive employer and also can speed up the hiring process to get your new employees working quicker.

Document Collaboration

With employees across multiple locations, collaborating on and approving a document can be time-consuming when you’re sending documents or PDFs back and forth. When key documents need approval or updates, and you don’t have much time, how can you ensure that it’s seen by the right people at the right time? DocStar allows for annotations which give you the flexibility to mark up your electronic documents and save these notes as annotations, allowing for collaboration that’s recorded and consistent.

Sharing permissions are also a key part of making document collaboration successful when your teams are in multiple locations. Ensuring that confidential documents stay confidential can be difficult in any scenario, but especially when files are passed around digitally. DocStar allows for granular permission settings in documents, inboxes, folders, workflows, and retention policies. With DocStar you can grant access to documents based on user permissions, which helps to ensure that only the right people see documents at the right time, easing any concerns you may have about utilizing a shared system.

DocStar was designed to be used from anywhere, so the functionality to access, annotate, and approve documents regardless of whether you’re in the office or at home is there for you from day one.

Sales Orders

Maintaining successful relationships with your customers should be your organization’s top focus, but often customer relationships get neglected when things feel “status quo.” Ensure your customers are getting the attention they deserve by building a more effective sales order process that can be completed from anywhere.

Consider how your organization receives orders. If they come through the mail and there isn’t anyone there to pick them up, it’s possible orders will be delayed or worse, not fulfilled at all. Emailed PDFs can be a great alternative, but what happens once the order is received? Does it get caught in the shuffle of emails back and forth or does your organization utilize a system that can ensure new orders can get distributed, approved, and filed in a timely manner?

Automating your sales orders is a great way to better support your customers, and make fulfilling the orders easier. Sales Order Automation works by automatically capturing and extracting data with Intelligent Data Capture (IDC). Once IDC recognizes and indexes the order, it can be passed along to be received by your ERP. This step eliminates the traditional step of receiving the sales order and then manually entering the data into your ERP. This entire process can happen with next to no human intervention, except for scanning in an order at the beginning and data validation at the end. Because this process is hands-off, orders can be completed and processes from anywhere.

How to implement remote automation processes

Mosaic has experience in creating custom solutions for businesses of all sizes and across industries. We’re prepared to work with you to understand your current pain points and drive your organization towards a more effective strategy to manage both in-office and remote employees. Ready to take the next step towards a more efficient workplace? Give us a call at 1-800-387-7859

Simplify Department of Transportation Required Forms with Automation

As a manufacturer or distributor, ensuring that your products get to the right place at the right time is a priority. While you can have the best technology to ensure that your supply chain is efficient, it’s also equally important to have a team that is going to work hard for your organization. By hiring efficient, competent drivers, you can ensure your brand is well-represented and your partners and customers are happy. When hiring your fleet, how do you ensure that the drivers are compliant with state-specific DOT regulations?

Completing the forms required to meet those regulations is time-consuming for both your new hires and your Human Resources team, and incomplete or incorrect forms have much larger consequences than other internal forms. The question is, how can you ensure these forms are completed in an efficient manner while still being compliant?

By implementing a smart web forms solution.

How do web forms integrate with your DOT onboarding?

The typical process when certifying drivers begins at the application stage. Basic background information is entered, along with 10 years of consecutive previous work history, 3 years of previous address history, accident history, and any additional qualifying qualifying questions. Often organizations require this process to be completed on paper, which is tedious and time-consuming, and also prone to errors. Given the detailed information that is required for this, applicants can spend a lot of time and energy gathering the information, and needing to enter it multiple times in multiple places only prolongs the process, and plain and simple can be annoying for the applicant to complete.

By implementing multiple dynamic forms, you simplify the driver application and can seamlessly feed the information into completing the required background checks.

How does the process work?

In a typical customer use case for these sorts of forms, the entire process is completed within our web forms solution.

First, to meet requirements, candidates complete the driver application form alongside a local HR manager. The human resources department can then push this data directly to their workforce management software using a custom integration. This means once the applicant enters their Social Security Number all the applicant’s data (e.g. DOB, address, previous work history, etc) can be automatically pulled and displayed. The applicant then completes the appropriate state forms based on the state and type of employment they are being hired for.

Once required forms such as the statement of on-duty hours, driving record review, safety performance history, and driver license compliance forms are completed by the candidate, the web form can then be easily sent to the background check company of your organization’s choice. With traditional completion methods, this can completely halt the hiring workflow for multiple days to print, fax, or mail the forms, but by submitting the completed forms electronically it speeds up the process.

After the background comes back clean and the HR manager wants to move the applicant to the next step, the candidate will reenter the hiring workflow and complete any state-specific DOT forms. Smart Web Forms can immediately discern the current state (based on the business address and employee’s address) and displays the appropriate forms dynamically, Human Resources doesn’t need to keep piles of these forms on hand if they have drivers at multiple locations in multiple states and there is no risk of the incorrect form being completed.

Once the HR manager decides they’d like the candidate to move forward, they complete the final Driver Consent form. Rather than copy and paste the data into PDFs and other documents, the software automatically overlays the webform data onto your existing onboarding PDFs.

Upon final completion, a digital checklist web form is launched and is placed under the candidate’s name in the HR manager’s task list. The checklist form will remain open while the driver has their driving skills assessed on the company course and completes any other post-on-boarding activities. Once these tasks are complete, the HR manager can simply check them off, ensuring that every required assessment is completed.

The web form then records the date of signature by the candidate and HR can add one year for notifications of expiration of DOT certification. Rather than this data being managed in mulitple places and risking expiration and fines, HR managers now have a running report of all expiring employee certifications to ensure compliance with state mandates.

Why web forms?

The aforementioned process, while still possible, would be a complete hassle to complete without web forms. The candidate would have to complete the forms on paper, manually writing in each step, or by PDF and having to manage manually formatting the document. Once each form is completed, the HR manager would have to type or re-type the information into their HRIS and background check program. This extends the time spent on the hire, and when your organization is in a period of hiring to fill a need, spending more time on each applicant means it takes longer for them to get on the road.

Without automated web forms, this process could easily take twice as long. Additionally, candidates may become fed up during the process and may not even complete it. Web forms are a better solution for both your employees and your potential candidates.  Mosaic has experience creating custom form solutions that integrate with your HRIS and ERP systems and can help your organization determine exactly the right workflows that going to work well for your business.

Schedule a demo with us, call 1-800-387-7859

The Future of Accounts Payable

Focusing on the future of your business is always important, especially during times of change or uncertainty. When you’re faced with circumstances you can’t control, you should focus on things that you can. Evaluating your current processes and determining if they’ll be sustainable long-term is one of the best things you can focus on at any time, but especially right now. One process that is often overlooked due to misconceived notions that it’s working “well enough,” is Accounts Payable. After all, it can be a department where it’s difficult to see problems until they’re too big to handle. If your invoices are usually paid on time and you haven’t had any major problems, then seeing the value of investing in a solution to automate your current process may require a deeper look. 

Understanding what the future of accounts payable looks like as a whole can help influence your decision to focus on accounts payable within your organization right now. We’ll walk through some insights and trends that are guiding the future of accounting, and share how we can help implement this investment.

Mosaic’s partner, DocStar partly sponsored a report from Levvel Research reviewing insights from 2019 and predicting what the future of accounts payable might look like. 

What they found

Solutions are becoming more accessible.

The market looks much different now than it has in the past. With more and more software options available, businesses of all sizes and industries now have access to the same resources that were previously only available to enterprise accounts. The solutions on the market today are more widely available, more cost-effective, and more flexible. Businesses can choose what they want their deployment model to look like and can customize it to be on-premise or in the cloud. 

Read More: Cloud-Based AP Automation the New Normal in Accounts Payable

Back-office operations are being better supported.

Customer-facing processes typically are the focus for most technology initiatives, which can benefit an organization’s overall success but doesn’t solve key issues. Companies are recognizing that investing in technology for back-office operations can benefit financial and operational health just as much as targeting customer-facing initiatives. These processes in the past were typically put on the back burner to focus on front-facing efforts, under the guise that back-office processes didn’t have as much of an impact. For many of those processes, specifically Accounts Payable, their success carries much of the organization’s success. Businesses are realizing this, and are investing accordingly to focus on their company’s overall wellbeing vs. simply looking good on the surface.  

Scalability is key.

Simple, single-point solutions are no longer effective for businesses in today’s environment. Businesses are seeking out solutions that can scale and transform entire departments rather than a single pain point. Automation within Accounts Payable can be utilized to enable scalable growth. This creates a competitive advantage and can help companies leverage their AP Automation investment across different areas of their business, including Human Resources and sales, further helping organizations gain a competitive advantage and succeed long term.

How to tell if AP Automation is right for your organization

While there’s no checklist of the exact qualifications a good AP Automation candidate has, there are patterns among organizations that indicate whether or not they can benefit from an AP overhaul. More often than not, organizations that need a solution the most don’t realize it. Their current state of managing their processes is “good enough” so they’re resistant to change, but they don’t realize how many small issues are adding up to create a much larger problem. 

Some key indicators include processing 500 or more invoices per month with more than 2 full-time AP clerks, or if you’re outsourcing your AP or are processing invoices in more than one location. If your organization is finding itself saddled with late payment penalties and are missing out on early payment discounts, have manual data entry errors, misplaced invoices and other documents, and a lack of visibility of your cash flow, that’s also a crucial indicator of your organization’s need.

Even if you don’t hit all of the checkmarks, your organization may still be a good candidate for AP Automation. Making the decision to transform your current process isn’t one that should be made lightly, but it is also one that comes with little risk and high reward. By working with a partner who has seen projects of all types be successfully deployed, you can feel even more confident in your decision.

How Mosaic can help

We’ve deployed a wide range of AP Automation projects, and understand the individual needs of organizations and departments. We can work with you to assess your needs and determine the process that will work best for you. Give us a call at 1-800-387-7859 to discuss your current process and how our solutions can simplify it. 

How to Automate Purchase Requisitions

At some point or another, an organization needs to purchase products, services, or other items for their business. Some of these are recurring purchases like stationary or cleaning supplies, but what about other necessary purchases that are less frequent? Successful organizations need to manage these purchases in a way that ensures funds are being responsibly spent and are being tracked. The most common and effective way to do this is through purchase requisitions. We’ll cover what a purchase requisition is, how they work, and how Mosaic can help your organization automate this process to be even more effective for your organization’s needs.

What is a Purchase Requisition? 

Purchase requisitions are a key document in the accounting process for many organizations. Unlike a purchase order, which is the document used to acquire goods or services, a purchase requisition is a document that employees utilize to request the purchase of goods or services, essentially it’s the step required before the purchase order. 

How do purchase requisitions work?

Traditionally, a purchase requisition starts with an employee wanting to purchase something, whether it’s a physical item, digital software, training, or a service, in most organizations, employees need to get internal approval from their manager, department head, leadership, or accounting. Some organizations require a purchase requisition for every form, others have a set dollar threshold, and others only require it for specific departments.

For some organizations, this may be a physical form that employees need to fill out and drop off to those who need to approve it, for others, there may be no real process beyond employees emailing their request, which makes it impossible to track and difficult to approve. 

Typically the information needed to complete this request includes, Product description and quantity, name of vendor, price, name and department of purchaser, and other company or department specific information. 

Purchase requisitions are important to plan for future spending, avoid mistakes or unpaid invoices, and can simplify the procurement process. 

To better understand the importance of this process, consider this:

An employee in one department at an organization realizes that they are running low on a specific item that they use daily, so they simply go ahead and purchase it using their company credit card. A few days later, before the shipment has arrived, an employee in a different department realizes the same item is running low, so they do the same thing and purchase the item, in the same quantity, to be used for the same purpose. Without either of them realizing it, that item has been double purchased and now the company is paying double what they should have. Now in this scenario it’s not the end of the world, but if this scenario happens frequently, it leads to overspending and a surplus of items. 

How the Purchase Requisitions process can be automated

To avoid the situation described above, it’s important to establish a clear and easy-to-use process for employees to utilize for future purchases. Just using a standard form isn’t enough to create an efficient and effective process, but with web forms and document management, you can easily create an automated process that works for your organization’s needs. 

By building your purchase requisition form as a web form, employees can access it from anywhere at any time. You can create the fields to match the requirements, and can even include fields such as department, e-signatures, and others that pertain to your existing accounting process. 

It’s important to utilize a holistic approach with purchase requisitions in this process rather than simply using a form and completing the rest of the tasks manually. If a form gets sent via email to a manager who needs to approve it, they may not see it, or may not properly notify the employee of the approval.  

AP specialist then needs to manually enter it into their ERP system, which is prone to mistakes from misreading the form, accidentally clicking the wrong keys, or other human error. Once the information is gathered from the form, where does it go? Does it get printed and filed away? Does it go into a shared folder that isn’t searchable or secure? While creating a web form solves one problem, it leaves others unanswered, but automation can change all that. 

With a complete automation suite, things can be streamlined even further. Once a web form is created and is completed by an employee, it can get automatically sent to their manager, who can quickly approve it and notify the employee of the approval. That form can then get automatically pushed to your ERP, where your accounting department can then properly plan for the costs, and also get filed into your document management system, which will establish a record of spending history with that employee. 

This process is simple and secure, and can save your employees time, money, and resources. 

Mosaic has experience in creating custom automation solutions for purchase requisitions for organizations of all sizes and across industries. Give us a call at 1-800-387-7859 to discuss your options.  

What are Integrated Expense Report Forms?

Organizations of every size typically have expenses that employees need to be reimbursed for. It could be for taking clients out to a meal, gas or travel expenses incurred when visiting clients or attending seminars or training, or utilized for other miscellaneous purchases necessary to an employee to best complete their jobs. Regardless of what the expense is, it’s important that organizations have an effective way to track these expenditures, reimburse their employees accordingly, and maintain a record of these expenses. 

For organizations that have employees working remotely or on the road often, expense reports can be much more difficult to obtain using traditional methods. As your organization’s workforce grows and adapts, it’s important to invest in solutions that evolve with your team.

What the current expense reporting process looks like

For many organizations, expense reports are maintained on paper, with employees stapling their receipts to the front. This process, while considered to be standard, is incredibly outdated and can prove to be frustrating for employees.

Employees completing the forms have to either print them out or obtain them directly from your accounts payable team. Then they have to compile all their receipts from over the course of the expense period, which varies between organizations, or they need to complete a report each time they make an expensed purchase.

Some organizations believe they have innovated the process by having employees email their reports and receipts, but with no clear parameters or structure, your employees might not give you all the correct information, and the reports will be difficult to track and organize.    

How web forms can simplify expense reports

Rather than have employees use a paper expense report, they can use web forms instead. The employee can log into the web form and fill out the required fields, upload a photo of their receipt, and send it directly to accounting to review. 

The data filled in the required fields will automatically generate onto a digital form that can be automatically filed in your current Document Management system, assigned to the correct employee. That same data will then be pushed directly into your Enterprise Resource Planning or other financial software to automatically track the expenses. 

Your employees completing the forms will spend significantly less time filing their expense reports, and employees in accounting will no longer have to manually enter and reenter information in order to track expenses and cut checks. With Integrated Expense Report Forms, you can reassign employees completing data entry to other tasks or reduce your workforce entirely.  

Why you should take forms to the next level

Beyond the initial time and cost savings, investing in Integrated Expense Report Forms can help your organization in the long run. Because these forms are automatically recorded, tracked, and organized, you can easily review them in the case of an audit or for any other reason. This helps save your employees time spent searching through closets and filing cabinets for the records or scrolling through thousands of emails to find a specific report from a certain date range. 

Additionally, making daily processes easier for employees is a key part of ensuring that they remain engaged and happy. This leads to stronger retention and overall a more positive and productive work environment. 

How Mosaic can help 

Mosaic has experience in deploying custom Integrated Expense Report Forms that can seamlessly work with a business’ existing systems. Give us a call at 1-800-387-7859 to schedule your custom solution review. 

 

What is Intelligent Data Capture?

A complete automation solution is more than just a single piece of software. By evaluating your organization’s needs and current processes, you can identify gaps and determine the best solutions to fill them. 

To best understand how software solutions can benefit your organization, it’s important to gain insight into how they work. Intelligent Data Capture is a crucial part of a successful automation strategy and can help take your existing document management solution to the next level. 

What is Intelligent Data Capture and how does it work?

In technical terms, Intelligent Data Capture (IDC) is the automated process of identifying and extracting critical information from incoming paper and electronic documents without manual intervention. 

In layman’s terms, IDC eliminates manual data entry by using technology. By investing in Intelligent Data Capture, your organization can save time, money, and resources by no longer having to manually extract data from your documents and organize it. 

Mosaic utilizes our partner DocStar’s Intelligent Data Capture tool to help enhance our customers’ current document processes. The way their IDC works is that once a solution is configured, it “learns” the common document types you use and builds a knowledge database of these document types. 

What this means is that IDC can classify the type of document you input (for example a purchase order versus an invoice), then extract the key information from that document, validate it, and then input that data into your database, enterprise resource planning software, or another business system of your choice. This process is different than traditional Optical Character Recognition because it goes above and beyond simply identifying the data, it also extracts and inputs it based on your needs. 

Intelligent Data Capture is extremely accurate while still being simple to set up and configure. Rather than spending additional time on configuration, IDC’s unique self-learning abilities mean that you can simply submit a single sample of the common document types you use. This means you can begin utilizing your solution sooner while still having the benefits of a sophisticated solution. Because Intelligent Data Capture “teaches” itself, it’s flexible enough to grow and adjust alongside your organization’s needs.

The most notable features of IDC include invoice recognition and data lifting, forms processing, automated document classification (separates various document types automatically), and exports to just about any accounting or line of business application.

Other, less advanced, intelligent data capture solutions had lower accuracy rates and required a substantial investment in set-up and configuration. Today’s solutions, on the other hand, are easy to configure and intelligent enough to learn and adapt for maximum accuracy and flexibility.

The steps in IDC’s process look like:

  • Input
  • Classify
  • Capture
  • Validate
  • Verify
  • Submit

These steps, when done manually, can take significant time and resources, but with Intelligent Data Capture, it can be simplified and streamlined.  

How can IDC benefit your organization?

At its core, Intelligent Data Capture is designed to eliminate manual data entry from every paper document you may have. This includes any form, invoice, remittance, purchase order, or any other type of document you come across in order to complete your daily tasks. By doing this, you can significantly reduce your headcount and give your employees more valuable tasks to focus on rather than spend hours and hours completing manual data entry. Through IDC your organization can double or triple the output of staff members processing inbound forms, without making them work harder.

Plain and simple, why pay an employee to do something that can be done through automation?

Intelligent Data Capture also increases accuracy significantly. When people extract data, human errors are bound to happen. Whether that be an employee misreading something, or mistyping data, the consequences can be significant. With IDC, that risk diminishes to close to zero. 

Since this process is so much more efficient, your organization can also benefit from early payment discounts and avoid any late payment fees. 

How to implement Intelligent Data Capture

Mosaic has experience in deploying DocStar IDC for organizations of all sizes, and we’d be glad to help your business save time and money by eliminating manual data entry. Give us a call at 1-800-387-7859 to learn more about how we can help.  

 

Understanding E-Signatures

“Sign on the dotted line!” How many times do you hear that phrase when completing forms? You likely have had to sign your name countless times throughout your life, starting out by writing it at the top of your homework in kindergarten and then including it on nearly every form since. 

Your signature is just as unique as your fingerprint, and it can hold a lot of weight. It’s your mark of commitment on contracts, your security on checks and credit cards, and your stamp of approval on office paperwork. 

The problem with these traditional signatures though, is that they’re a pain. Typically these forms are piles of paper that someone has to go through and mark off where they need to be signed, and then you sit there, pen in hand, signing and initialing. It takes time that could be spent doing more valuable tasks, and it’s certainly not enjoyable. 

Fortunately, E-Signatures alleviate much of that. 

What are E-Signatures?

According to current U.S. legislation and the Electronic Signature & Records Association (ESRA), E-Signatures are defined in technical terms as “an electronic sound, symbol or process that is attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.”

In layman’s terms, an e-signature is a mark on an electronic document that captures the signer’s intent to approve or accept the contents of that document. E-Signatures are just like a physical signature, just digital. 

Do E-Signatures have the same weight as regular signatures?

E-Signatures have the same legal standing as a handwritten signature as long as it adheres to the requirements of the specific regulation it was created under. Some of these requirements might include:

  • The document signer can be uniquely identified and linked to the signature
  • The signer is the only party with access to the private key used to create the signature
  • The signature must be able to identify if the associated data has been tampered with, post-signing
  • If the data has been changed, the signature must be able to be voided

Fortunately, E-Signature software is designed to comply with these requirements and ensure that the documents being signed have the same legality of physical documents with pen and ink signatures. 

How can I utilize E-Signatures?

With DocStar Enterprise Content Management (ECM), you also get an embedded electronic signature capability developed using the DocuSign E-Signature API. You can access DocuSign from within DocStar ECM workflow tasks and ad hoc actions for all DocStar ECM document content, forms, and packages. 

This integration means that accessing and signing off on approvals and agreements is simple, quick, and secure. Need someone else’s signature? You can easily upload and send documents to others to complete anywhere at any time. No more waiting days for mailed documents or for them to print, sign, and scan, you can even send reminders and check on the status so you know exactly where the document stands. 

The combination of DocStar ECM plus DocuSign eSignature allows for a comprehensive contract management system and facilitates end-to-end business workflows. In scenarios where content validation with eSignature is required for documents, forms, and packages, this integration shines. 

Within DocStar ECM, DocuSign maintains a complete, automated history of every viewing, printing, sending, signing, or declining activity on a document. Once a document is signed, a certificate of completion is attached in DocStar ECM as proof of the signing. With DocuSign, you can be confident that your technology meets current regulations and statutes, such as the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA), the U.S. Federal ESIGN Act, and E.U. Directive 1999/93/EC, and others.

Let us help

Being DocStar implementation specialists, Mosaic can help implement this integration and help your organization complete advanced workflows to automate your entire end-to-end process. Give us a call at 800.387.7859 to set up your customized demo.   

Automating your Onboarding Process

Human Resources is a paper-heavy facet of your organization, with strict rules and regulations to uphold, it’s imperative that records are accurately kept to protect your organization and employees. Just because you need to keep accurate records doesn’t mean that you can’t reduce the amount of paper in your process. In fact, by moving your HR processes to digital forms and files, you can protect your records in case of a natural disaster and simplify your onboarding process. Learn how each form in your hiring, onboarding, and day-to-day HR activities can be migrated to a digital solution.

 

The Job Application

Your future employee’s first impression of your organization, the job application is often an overlooked part of your hiring process. If applicants get frustrated by entering the same information over and over again, they may abandon the application altogether and you may lose out on a great candidate. Even worse are physical paper applications that require data entry from your HR staff.

Take care in creating your applications by asking questions relevant to the position and organization, and automate them by using smart web forms that can be completed quickly from any device. You can create custom triggers that will change questions based on a candidate’s geographic location and other factors, meaning the applicant will only answer questions relevant to them. Smart forms allow for space to upload resumes, certifications, and other supporting documents as well, so you can have everything you need to screen candidates in one space.

By utilizing and storing online applications, you can also keep some standout applicants on file for future openings, and quickly find them when you want to move forward with hiring them.

 

The Offer Letter

The first “form” you give to your new employee, the offer letter is exciting for you to send, and thrilling for the new employee to receive. While every company’s letter is different, the standard content is relatively the same.

There are additional elements you can include in your offer letter to best fit your company culture, but the most important way you can make your offer letter stand out is to accompany it with a personal call or email.

By automating, you can create a template and quickly replicate it to change the information to be relevant with your new employee. You can use pre-populated forms based on their job application including name, address, title, and more. You can simply write the offer letter once and quickly send it out to any new hires, which is especially convenient if your organization is rapidly growing.

 

The I-9 and W-4

Often times the first forms a new hire must complete are the various government-issued and regulated forms for employment eligibility, taxes, and other important records. These include the Federally required I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification, the W4 Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate. These forms are detail-heavy and can be a long process to complete. Once the physical paper form has been filled out, HR often has to manually enter the data into your ERP system. With smart forms, they can be boiled down into simple fields with clear fields, with known information prepopulating many fields (such as the new hire’s name, address, and date of birth). By not having to re-enter redundant information, the forms can be even quicker to fill out. Once the web form is complete, the information simply overlays the physical form and you don’t have to worry about any missing fields!

 

Direct Deposit

While the purpose of direct deposit is to make it easier for employees to receive their paychecks, the process of setting up direct deposit on a paper form can be frustrating. Using a web form to complete direct deposit means that, like previous forms, known information is already pre-populating the fields and it is much simpler to enter routing and account numbers (no crossing out incorrect numbers!).

 

Short/Long Term Disability

Though essential to your organization in case of an emergency, these forms are typically just another thing to sign in the onboarding packet. Ensure accuracy (without sacrificing time) by including this form in your digital onboarding workflow. Known fields are pre-populated, and making adjustments and reviewing important information is quick and easy. Like all web forms, you can allow for a digital wet signature, no more hand cramps from signing forms over and over again.

 

Non-compete/Non-solicitation

Also crucial for protecting your organization, ensuring your employees sign their non-compete/non-solicitation forms during onboarding is essential. By including this in your digital onboarding packet, they can quickly review and agree to your organization’s policy. By including the wet signature, you can feel confident that the form is secure.

 

Benefit Elections

If your organization offers health, dental, eye, life, or other insurance, you likely have a pile of benefits election forms for new employees to complete on their first day. These are crucial to ensure your new hires get a full understanding of the benefits they’re offered and that they are able to select the correct plan from your offerings. Unfortunately, with the sheer number of forms and the fact that they have countless fields to complete, employees may accidentally skip a step or not provide correct information. Just like the W-2 and 1099 forms, benefit election forms can easily be prepopulated with known information, making completing the forms a much less redundant process.

 

Employee Handbook

Keeping your employee handbook in a central repository can be helpful for both current and new employees who need a refresher on your policies. By including it in your digital onboarding packet, you can ensure that new hires see and agree to your organization’s best practices. Plus, keeping your handbook entirely digital means you’ll save pages and pages of paper.

 

Post Hiring Forms

After the applicant has been hired and has gone through a typical onboarding process, many post hiring forms such as salary/performance reviews, salary or hourly time sheets, PTO requests, expense reports, training attendance, incident reports, to name a few, can also be automated as well. Each form or workflow within a form is a static URL that can be embedded into any web page or email. Users can easily click the hyperlink from their email or within their browsers favorites to access and complete the form.

 

With both a digital ECM solution and a smart web form solution, you can not only have future forms be stored in an online repository, but your existing paperwork can be scanned into your digital library and simple to retrieve whenever you need it. Your employees’ records will stay with them from hiring to retiring, and you won’t lose any more time by having to search through filing cabinets for the correct paperwork.

 

Upgrading your forms from paper to digital doesn’t have to be a difficult process, with Mosaic’s experience and expertise, we can help make migrating to online forms and a digital repository simple.

Implementing Sales Order Automation

If your organization provides goods or services, your sales order process is a completely necessary part of your day-to-day activity. Unfortunately, this process can often be a time-consuming drain on employee productivity. Most organizations just see this as a necessary evil that won’t ever change, but by strategically implementing smarter processes, your organization can completely transform what was once a frustrating process.

We’ll be sharing more on what Sales Order Automation looks like, and how DocStar and Mosaic can help implement it for your organization.  

 

What is Sales Order Automation (and why it’s important) 

Sales order automation (SOA) specifically focuses on streamlining time-consuming manual pieces in the sales process. By automating these necessary tasks, your sales team can focus on value-adding activities rather than spending excess time on data entry. 

A common concern in any organization is whether or not crucial tasks get completed. Specifically, in the sales process, employees may enter incorrect data or neglect to enter it completely. This can lead to inaccurate billing, missing sales, and a loss in time in productivity. Automation ensures the correct data is entered and that it follows the correct steps in the process. It helps simplify the sales cycle, empowering customers and prospects to complete purchases and better understand your organization’s products or services. 

The Sales Order process has evolved greatly since the days of filling out carbon sales order forms and manually entering it into a register. Mosaic’s partner, DocStar, has led this evolution by providing advanced automation technology that allows for a streamlined sales process with little to no human intervention.

By taking advantage of this technology, you can improve your customer relationships, streamline employee tasks, and gain a competitive advantage. It may seem like SOA is a massive leap from where your business is currently, but with the right tools and knowledge, your organization can quickly evolve. 

 

DocStar’s Sales Order Automation functionality

An automated Sales Order process starts in one of two ways, either a scanned purchase order or a digital document. By accepting both formats, your organization can best support your customer’s existing way of submitting orders, reducing any potential learning curves or friction. 

Once the order is received, it goes through Intelligent Data Capture (IDC). IDC automatically captures and extracts structured data (such as a customer’s past purchases) as well as unstructured data (like written communications). Once IDC recognizes and indexes the order, it can be passed along to the next step. This step eliminates the traditional step of receiving the sales order and then manually entering the data into your ERP. 

The order is then automatically received by your ERP, which will then validate the data from the order. Key pieces such as customer name or number, part numbers, and other information are reviewed. If there is an exception or data that requires manual review, it will automatically be sent to the correct employee to validate it manually. If the data is valid, it will create a sales order in your ERP and the purchase is one step closer to being complete. 

This entire process can happen with next to no human intervention, except for scanning in an order at the beginning and data validation at the end. Because this process is hands-off, your employees can be more productive, leading to more sales and more growth. 

 

Next Steps

If the concept of completely transforming your Sales Order process sounds overwhelming, don’t worry, Mosaic is here to help you through the entire process.

Give us a call at 800.387.7859 to discuss your current Sales Order process and where you want to go.

6 Ways Your Organization Can Use Web Forms

What forms does your organization utilize? Once you begin to take inventory of all of the forms you rely on to complete common tasks, you may be surprised at how many you use.

How do you and your employees complete these forms? Often they’re completed on paper, making them prone to errors, missing information, and being misplaced. Fillable PDF forms eliminate the paper aspect of the process, but they’re often difficult to complete and don’t save any time compared to paper.

Implementing a smart web forms product can eliminate these issues and create a simpler, more streamlined process for you and your employees. Organizations often don’t realize the full potential of a web forms product and worry that it’s limited to just one specific process or department. The benefit of web forms is that they’re flexible and scalable, meaning they can fit in with just about any process or need, and thanks to Mosaic’s implementation consultants, they can be customized to your organization.

So, exactly where can these forms be used? We’ll review 6 common uses, but the beauty of web forms is that any paper form can be transformed into a web form.

Onboarding Paperwork

The time from when a new hire signs their offer letter to their first week is crucial for an organization to make a good impression on their new employee. Forms such as I-9, W-4, WOTC, 401K, Direct Deposit, and Benefits Elections can easily turn in to stacks of paperwork. These forms also require new hires to write out the same basic information over and over again.

Online forms simplify the process and eliminate redundancy. Each form gets filled out quicker and there is less margin for error. Also, employees simply e-sign their documents, meaning no printing, signing, and scanning necessary.

Timesheets/Time Off Requests

Processing and managing timesheets and time-off requests is a heavy lift for human resources. It’s not uncommon for paper timesheets and time-off requests to go missing or for data to be entered incorrectly. Web forms allow for your employees to quickly fill out their timesheets as well as submit time off requests to their managers for approval.

Contracts

If your organization requires employees, vendors, or clients to sign any sort of contract, you understand the frustration that comes with trying to get a signature. This becomes increasingly difficult if you are sending contracts outside your physical office. Using web forms makes it simple to send contracts to the right people to review, and with wet signatures, they can sign them from their computer, tablet, or even mobile device, no printing and scanning required.

Expense Reports

When your employees submit expense reports, they typically have two choices, scan their invoices and receipts and email them in bulk to accounting, or staple together the physical documents and drop them off in person. Both processes aren’t organized, and there’s a high likelihood for documents to get lost or entered incorrectly. Web forms can eliminate the disorganization of paper expense reporting and can help track employee submissions.

Purchase Orders/Proof of Delivery

If you operate in the manufacturing or distribution space, you likely have countless orders placed weekly. Typically the existing process requires new documents for each step, the purchase order, the picking ticket, verification documents, delivery slip, proof of delivery, and other documentation. Web forms can not only make the order process easier for customers, but it can also help move along your workflow and reduce the number of physical documents attached to each order. Proof of delivery tickets are digital and able to be updated instantly with wet signature verification.

Healthcare

Many nonprofits and healthcare organizations have antiquated patient onboarding processes. Stacks of paper forms are required for patients or caretakers to complete and for your organization to track. Additionally, crucial patient records are left disorganized, which can not only be a point of frustration for your employees, but it can also lead to legal issues.  Web forms can solve that. A custom patient onboarding workflow connects directly to your ECM. Meaning you can quickly onboard patients and easily track them.

 

These are just a small sample of the uses for web forms for your organization. At Mosaic, we can help you determine the perfect use for forms in your organization. Think your organization would benefit from migrating from paper-based forms to web forms but aren’t sure how? Give us a call at 770.452.7373 and we’ll see how your current business processes can benefit.