Questioning the E-Form Existence

In RxLaser's experience, standard e-forms are suitable for the medical, government, manufacturing, banking, insurance, education and media industries and are, in essence, the closest distributors get to the "form" in electronic forms.

To Jon Baker, vice president of strategic planning, Allied Business Documents, Providence, R.I., such e-forms are almost archaic. In fact, he said that tangible, printed electronic forms never even got a chance to blossom.

"E-forms never really existed," said Baker. "In the early '90s, designers got really excited about the old form template that was downloaded onto computers. Users essentially filled in the blanks and then printed the forms," he said. The reality, he noted, is that the user still had a paper-based form.

"Initially the hype predicted that e-forms would completely replace traditional ones, but that didn't pan out," he said. "Today companies are using custom applications that can replace forms and add value."

Such applications have become more sophisticated in the past three years, having been designed specifically for the Internet. For example, said Baker, when routing an expense report, a computer application takes the data and sends it to the back-end accounting package, thus eliminating the need for a printed form.

"But, I don't have the Chicken Little syndrome when it comes to traditional paper-based forms. There is always a requirement to have paper in certain situations," Baker conceded.

One of the companies making a profit selling software for paper-based e-forms is Plantrol, Westfield, N.Y. The forms, said Joe DeBiso, technical implementation manager, are technically called form overlays.

"Electronic forms take on a lot of different meanings. We implement them at the basic level in which they are pre-defined forms that reside in the laser printer. We use the same technology to generate a fax output," explained DeBiso.

Plantrol also utilizes e-forms that run through Adobe PDF documents that generate e-mail acknowledgements on both purchase orders and quotes.