Howdy Folks!
I’d like to focus this article on a word that’s all around us, even in our company name Easy. Its definition states “Achieved without great effort; presenting few difficulties”. How can you make your job “easier”? One way is to eliminate routines that are difficult or slow, in favor of methods are are…as you can guess….easy.
A friend of mine (let’s call her Holly) works in marketing and would often tell me how challenging it is to process requests for new marketing materials from both her company departments and external clients. Holly′s team accepts new requests via phone calls and e-mails, which is the method they’ve always used.
However, just because a process has been adopted, doesn’t mean it’s the best one. Sometimes the requests wouldn’t be stated clearly, resulting in follow up phone calls and emails. Sometimes the requests would be incomplete, requiring clarification. Sometimes another member of her team would input the data incorrectly into the spreadsheets and would cause quite the confusion and chaos.
Holly said that some days she spent more time gathering all the necessary information, than actually working on the marketing project. I simply could not resist not to shamelessly pitch our latest module called Custom Forms to Holly.
Custom Forms is a simple, yet incredibly effective method to help automate proceedures and routines. What those proceedures are, is really up to the user. In the example above, a form could be created and placed on their website allowing people to state what type of materials they need by filling out a few fields. The fields can range from text areas, to file attachments, to dates and more. Even better, all the information is automatically stored in Easy Projects allowing the users to view these records (answers) and convert the information into a new project or task.
Whenever someone fills out the record, it will trigger an e-mail to one (or a group of users) notifying them of a new request for materials. Thus eliminating all the headaches Holly listed to me earlier. Needless to say, she was intriguied and wanted to see more.
And that’s just the beginning, the possibilities are endless when using the custom forms. The set up takes only a few minutes and the time it can save will certainly be noticeable.
If you haven’t yet taken a look at the custom forms, I’d like to invite you to take a few minutes and review the Custom Forms module or see some of the training videos we’ve created.
As always, if there is a topic you’d like to see addressed in this column, please leave a comment below. I’m always in favor of hearing from our readers.
Until next time, remember there’s always an easier way.
Cheers,
Al