Formlify for Australian Utilities

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Your organisation

You are the General Manager, Executive General Manager, Chief Operating Manager or Service Delivery Manager of an organisation that provides gas, electricity, water or waste water services to the Australian public. Yours is an essential service used by millions of citizens every day.

Your organisation employs hundreds or thousands of staff including managers, sales and marketing people in city offices to inspectors and maintenance workers in remote locations and others in between. Normal operation involves forms like surveys, inspections, organisational policies and procedures, applications for provision of service, customer details, payments or service booking forms, and many of them are still paper-based.

Your challenges

Customers are have been spoiled by internet-based providers like Amazon, and are more demanding; they don’t think about the physical infrastructure and technology you have to deal with. You want to provide better customer service and sharpen your competitiveness, but your systems may be holding you back.

You have many large, valuable assets scattered across the country. The cost of maintenance is high and increasing with age and these structures are vulnerable to extreme weather. The time lag between damage, inspection and rectification can be long, increasing the risk of reputational damage.

Your environment is changing rapidly with new technologies, increased government oversight and compliance, increased competition, industry amalgamations and fluctuations in market prices. You also must secure the PII (Personally Identifiable Information) of thousands of customers and are a prime target for hackers seeking to access this valuable data or wreak havoc or mischief on the community.

Your IT environment is diverse and aging, probably including legacy systems which are difficult to secure and adapt to change. You know that smarter, web-based systems could help overcome many of these challenges, and be a step towards Digital Transformation, but you’re concerned about cost and the risk of complicating ongoing management, as your IT team is already over-stretched.

Your options

You may have looked around and seen some of these options for your organisation:

Improve your manual systems
If your form systems remain largely paper-based, it will be difficult to adapt to change in regulations, compliance and legislation, or to improve efficiency or service. More importantly, increased oversight and compliance will increase administrative overheads, reducing your funds available for improvement. This is your best option if adaptability or cost-cutting are not urgent right now.

Use a simple form builder
These are free or low cost online systems that let you build simple ‘free-form’ forms. They include a number of field types and features, but they’re not designed for complex applications. They’re not conditional or responsive, they don’t enable control of design, approval or publication, and they probably won’t integrate with your other business management systems. These form-builders may save a little time, but leave the full benefits of automated online forms out of reach. This is your best option if you only need simple forms and integration with other systems is not a priority.

Use a high end, enterprise solution
These are comprehensive feature-rich online solutions, ideally suited to organisations with enterprise-level budgets. They have impressive functions, but these come with sizable price tags for initial purchase, additional forms, and enabling compliance functionality. You may also find the providers are based overseas, so compliance with Australian regulations may not be possible nor hosting your data in Australia nor integration with legacy systems or non-mainstream business systems. This is the option for you if money and time are in plentiful supply.

Use a feature-rich, cost-effective solution
These are intelligent purpose-built form builders with built-in workflows and conditional logic, that are cost-effective to buy and easy for users to fill. They let you design and validate forms quickly, and control access, publication, escalation and alerts. The smartest ones can integrate with your other business systems too. The most popular of this type are designed, hosted and supported in Australia, so compliance with Australian regulations, data security and ongoing support are assured. This is your best option if adaptability, value and peace of mind are key drivers.

How Formlify can help your Utility

Formlify is a purpose-built, smart web form builder from CIBIS, an Australian leader in business management software development for over two decades. Formlify was designed to deliver advanced enterprise-grade functionality for Australian organisations, without the enterprise price tag.

For Utilities, Formlify provides:

Ease and control for your staff:

• Intuitive ‘drag and drop’ form creation, without the need for coding knowledge or help from IT
• Unlimited fields, statuses, logic flows and vertical layouts, including your corporate branding
• Advanced workflows linked to forms, giving you infinite control, variety and flexibility
• Conditional logic so staff see simpler forms, with only fields relevant to them
• Notifications sent based on form submission, state changes or workflow step

Convenience and confidence for your customers:

• Forms that are attractive, intuitive, and easy and fast to fill
• Ability to partially fill forms via iOS or Android smart device, and return later to complete them
• Ability to add images, notes or signatures to your forms, so you can complete the picture
• Marking of sections as confidential or redacted (such as credit card details) so privacy is preserved and PII/PCI requirements are met
• Integration with your payment gateway making payments fast and easy.

Control and peace of mind for your IT and management teams:

• Integration with your EDMS, other business systems including legacy systems
• Workflows that make compliance automatic and assured
• Value for money, with no limit to forms published; you are only charged for forms received
• Peace of mind knowing that design, hosting and support is by a trusted, long term, local provider.

If your Utility organisation is still largely paper-based and you seek an advanced, flexible, cost-effective online form builder which will streamline operations now and adapt to change, contact CIBIS.