by Arthur Gingrande, e-Doc Magazine
03-01-2006
Extending business processes with Web forms can streamline your business and drive Web-based CRM applications
Over the years, e-forms have become a means of reengineering enterprise business processes. Now, by combining Internet-enabled work- flow, new extensible forms languages, electronic signatures, and the use of encryption and encoding devices such as 2D barcodes, electronic forms are personalizing consumer interactions with customizable, browser-enabled GUIs that extend corporate business processes from corporate headquarters right onto their desktops. Process-driven Web portals or extranets reflexively extend the call center to the customer’s own PC desktop—and, in the process, replace the customer service representative.
A Web browser allows a consumer to take care of all of their customer service needs—ordering, payment, changing the delivery address, or untangling a shipping problem. In effect, this enables organizations to electronically outsource their customer service operations over the Internet back to their own customers. Rapid access to answers and problem-solving over the Web has the additional benefit of increasing customer loyalty.
Building Extranets with e-forms driven Web portals
Automated CSS (customer self-service) supports the entire document processing lifecycle for CRM and customer self-service in an e-business environment, including data and content capture, document management, repository management, search, retrieval, e-document rendering, case management workflow, and professional services. The scanning and imaging component provides flexible deployment of form images and data capture, plus integration with an image repository and workflow engine. The ERM component extends that core solution by adding the legacy data access and Internet connectivity plus integration with workflow.
This means that, whether it contains email, snail mail, faxes, documents, or online transactions, a customer’s folder is always up to date—and instantly accessible— to both the customer and a customer representative, if required. ERM-based data mining makes it possible to retrieve any printed document on-the-fly, and then compile instant reports for customer access. A workflow engine treats the converged data streams as one business process, while the Web browser functions as a multipurpose GUI that enables the customer to view and interact with documents of virtually any type or format—without any cumbersome plug-ins.
For example, at a CSS website, if a loan applicant is applying for a loan online from his/her own bank, where the applicant’s banking and transaction history is available, his/her credit worthiness can be checked electronically and then the loan can be approved almost instantly; worst case, in a matter of hours. This process tremendously broadens the opportunity for cross-selling. (“While you’re waiting for your loan application to be checked and approved, why not learn about setting up your IRA account with our bank?”)
While consumer involvement and enhanced customer service can cut both ways as customers expect near-instant turnaround, even when not necessary, an exercise in streamlining a cost center can end up yielding a significant competitive advantage.
XForms: the Next Generation of HTML Forms
In addition to serving as a data entry and extranet interface, e-forms are legal and regulatory documents. Organizations need to be able to digitally sign forms and archive them electronically to stay in compliance with government regulations—while still retaining the ability to print to paper.
As more organizations use the Web each day to move information and transact business, the inability of HTML to communicate the content of what is presented (and not just its presentation format) becomes a significant constraint. While HTML is a means of presenting information, it does not tell users, or computer applications, what the information is or how it could be used. HTML has played a big role in helping businesses make the transition from paper to Web documents, but content management demands more capabilities than HTML can deliver. These capabilities include being able to re-use data for multiple applications and delivering content on demand through Web applications when requests are complicated and require more than the title or date of a document.
To meet the complex demands of content management, the World Wide Web Consortium adopted an open mark-up language standard for structured documents called eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML). XML is a text-based markup language that adds metadata to text information and, in some cases, binary data. Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, XML is a simplified but formal subset of SGML that eases the exchange of structured data between Web applications by pre- serving the SGML features of validation, structure, and extensibility. XML does not replace HTML, but instead serves as a complement to HTML when structured data is involved.
While HTML remains a useful tool for storing and exchanging small, unstructured documents, XML provides a solution for exchanging large amounts of structured data across the Internet and over networks in general. XML transforms Web-based documents into interactive, re-usable documents. XML tags describe the content of the document and assign roles to the data—transforming words into searchable information. Accordingly, XML is robust enough to launch workflow and processdriven applications. Practically speaking, XML-based forms technologies made it possible to deliver the same form to a PDA, a cell phone, screen reader, or conventional desktop machine, without loss of functionality for the end user. XML-enabled Web forms and their varieties have come to be known generically as XForms.
Beyond XML
XML is a powerful tool, but it does not provide all of the functionality required by forms users. A useful way to look at forms is to see them as line-of-business (LOB) objects that move data through LOB processes. Take a purchase order, for instance. It is more than just a form. It is the vehicle through which businesses purchase goods and services. Organizations use a purchase order to capture and transmit the required data to both their own workers and their suppliers. They use a purchase order form to initiate business processes; without it, they could not buy goods or services. In other words, forms are LOB objects that enable organizations to share both documents and information that extend beyond their employees to include their partners, suppliers, and customers.
Although for simple applications it is possible to separate passive XML data from an active Java or Perl program that processes it, we are now entering an age where content and activity become so naturally intertwined that it makes no sense to separate them. This condition demands the use of a mark-up language that is more powerful and robust than XML.
Along these lines, a number of vendors that realize the descriptive and programmatic limitations of XML are bolstering it with additional features that extend its value. Two such public languages are XML Forms Architecture (XFA), originated by JetForm (now owned by Adobe), and eXtended Forms Description Language (XFDL), developed by PureEdge (recently acquired by IBM).
XFA adds to XML a critical missing component—tags that are computationally active—that extends the value of XML by taking into consideration the lifecycle of an e-form and what the e-form means to different people at different stages in that process. XFA-based forms ease an organization’s transition to e-process. XFA creates a form template that is a collection of related objects and processing rules that contains all of the objects and intelligence in the form. The XFA form template is a specification of data capture, rendering, and manipulation rules that apply to all form instances created from that template. This means that regardless of the range of an organization’s needs regarding the capture and presentation, movement and processing, and integration and printing of forms, XFA enables an organization to address its current and future needs with one template and without changing technologies.
XFDL is a forms design and document processing meta-language that solves the problem of guaranteeing that a document remains unchanged from its inception to its receipt by the authorized recipient. It captures the entire form context with the data as part of a unique electronic signature that includes the authentication password used to log into email or the forms application.
The capability to electronically capture a physical signature, which can be embedded in an electronic version of a paper document, is a crucial step toward providing security over the Internet in a number of vertical markets where physical signatures on paper documents are legally required. With XFDL, the electronic signature is locked into the encryption of the complete form so that even a single bit change to the form after signing can be detected. XFDL also can bind the signature to certificate servers, like VeriSign, and encrypt it within smart cards for stronger verification. The result is a legally defensible form that cannot be repudiated and that, in conjunction with XFA, can be used to provide a historical audit trail of changes to an agreement.
2D barcodes: “Software on Paper”
Recently, Adobe introduced two-dimensional (2D) barcodes as an add-on feature to Acrobat Capture. While the company has done little to promote the feature, the potential it holds for the e-forms world is nothing short of revolutionary. Using this technology, a form can be represented by a 2D barcode that, when converted into an image format, becomes a Portable Document File (PDF) of the form or document in question. A 2D barcode looks like a collection of small, random arrays of checkerboard squares assembled in a rectangular area that is not much bigger than a commemorative postage stamp; and it is capable of storing a large quantity of ASCII data. A 2D barcode is the entire data record, whereas a linear barcode is a pointer to a stored record specific to the data in the barcode. Within a 2D barcode, thousands of lines of code can be stored on paper in a small area. Error-correction code and redundancy control algorithms provide 2D barcode technology with methods for validating stored data and protecting it. For example, if the documents in question are going to undergo rough treatment, then the redundancy factor in the barcode can be turned up, allowing a relatively large amount of the barcode to be damaged or destroyed (up to one-third), yet still contain enough data so that embedded algorithms can reconstruct it with 100% accuracy.
The new twist that Adobe recently introduced to the market has to do with what happens when the form containing the 2D barcode is altered by computer. Any changes in the form fields are reflected by changes to the 2D barcode. Specific changes to a 2D barcode can be saved and printed simply as a barcode by itself or they can be re-saved as an Adobe PDF file that contains the new, updated 2D barcode with the new form data. The 2D barcode, in effect, becomes fillable. In other words, with respect to an Adobe PDF form that an end user fills out via computer, (in addition to containing location coordinate information about that particular form’s passive data) the 2D barcode contains the active data that was keyed into it as the end user filled out the form. So, when the printed 2D barcode is scanned and recognized, the contents of the form data fields are revealed, eliminating either the need for a data entry operator or for OCR in order to populate a database with the contents of a PDF document.
When used in e-forms, the versatility of the 2D barcode feature is capable of storing binary code, (any data format, any instruction set, or any complex workflow procedures) and can be stored within the limits of a 2D barcode’s storage capabilities. Possibilities include image files such as PIC and BMP, as well as CSV, XML, XFA, XFDL, or any custom-designed data format. It would also be possible to wrap the data on a filled-in paper form, with the proper XML schema, into a 2D barcode that can be printed on a paper form, which in turn can be scanned and then converted back to XML for use in XML-driven applications. This feature is particularly relevant for software developers and their clients who already are invested heavily in XML. In this respect, a 2D barcode is accurately characterized as “software on paper,” and its main limitation is the imagination of the user.
Electronic signatures work when a cursive signature isn’t required to seal the deal. But there are times when a legal, handwritten signature is necessary to validate a document. In these instances, the answer can be found by employing multiple technologies to complete the picture by a kind of triangulation. For example, a mutual fund transaction mandates the receipt of a signature to legally initiate it. A customer fills out an electronic form to open an account at a mutual funds website. The information is entered into an electronic database. He or she prints the filled-in form and signs it. The form contains a unique, OCR-readable number on the signature page. When the form is received—either by fax or as an image file scanned from the form received in the mail—the presence of the customer’s signature is detected, the number is automatically located and intelligently recognized, and the result is validated against the existing database.
Since the form data about the investment has already been electronically entered at the website, once validation occurs via the numeric match up, the transaction workflows can be initiated and then completed as soon as the initial investment is received electronically either when the check clears or directly through electronic funds transfer.
Forms, in many ways, are the backbone of business. The shift to electronic forms creates opportunities for organizations to streamline their business while enhancing customer loyalty. The tools are out there; go out and use them.
Arthur Gingrande (781-258-8181 or arthur@imergeconsult.com), a partner of IMERGE Consulting (www..imergeconsult. com) and a nationally acclaimed expert and pioneer in image-based intelligent character recognition (ICR), electronic forms, and forms automation
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