Hey, it’s Ike. Again 😁

This week, I’m going to share how you can digitise a paper based process using tools you already have. That is, costing you nothing. I did it for an international organisation my ex-employer had a consulting contract with. I was the lead consultant for that project/client, and Word and Excel just wasn’t going to cut it as long as I was part of that team. They used Google Workspace (formerly GSuite) and so I used it (what they had) without it costing them an extra dime.

If you use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 already, continue reading. We don’t have much time, so I’m just going to get into it — gotta keep this 5 minutes or less 😉

Using Google Workspace

As I signed an NDA, it would be impossible to share which company this is without getting sued 😉. But, my team were tasked with creating all their policies and procedures, and training them on them. The consultancy I worked with then used Word & Excel. Not me — it made me feel like I was going backwards. I knew Word & Excel wouldn’t cut it if I was to lead on the project so I used Google forms to move inspections, daily & weekly checks, incident reports and various other inspections like racking and forklifts.

The result a week later when I met with their management? They were AMAZED at how much data their team were able to collect and the awesome visibility. No chance to lie or cook reports, It was there for all to see.

You can do the same with pretty much most forms you presently have that are still on Word or Excel. You just need to get creative and strategic with it so that you can collect data the best way possible for rich insight and easy analysis. Once you start to collect data, you can’t start playing around with the form or editing it as you will mess the data all up. I learned this the hard way. So you must get it right before you make it publicly available for use. Once published for company use, it’s a done deal and you must start a new form if you think changes are necessary. This is in order to preserve the data.

Guess what? Thanks to that lesson I learned about editing a form that is already collecting data, Flocrunch’s form is designed to ensure your data doesn’t get messed up with changes. You will love it!

I always make out a draft plan first before I start building. Try this.

For this newsletter, I am sharing a very basic incident form I created a while back primarily for the purpose of illustrating what’s possible. I have done a silent recording to keep it really short. Once I talk, I can go on and on 😁. But if still confused, I have a video that is about 15 minutes long. Want to see it? Feel free to contact me using the thumbs up at the bottom of this newsletter to send me your request or reply this email.

To get started with your digital forms…

1. Go to forms from preferably your gmail email page. Click the 9 dots (app launcher icon) as shown circled in the image below. Scroll until you see forms (circled in the image below). Click it and it will open in a new tab.

2. Click blank under Start a new form (circled in image below)

3. Watch this 38 seconds clip showing you the different data types, how you can set the questions to deliberately capture data that can give you charts/analytics without lifting a fingers like the images below.

I also added below some images of the kind of data you can collect and analyse.

Also, you can…

1. add videos, images or even choose to make certain questions mandatory to answer by selecting “required”.
2. use sections to separate the questions (for example, having a section for injured person details, another for incident details, another for witness info and statement etc — you get the drift?)
3. add descriptions to questions (to help people understand the question or as a guide on kind of answers you’re looking for)
4. skip to a new section based on answers chosen (as shown in image below).

There is so much you can do with Google or Microsoft forms!

Using Microsoft 365

It really isn’t much different but looks slightly more complicated. Once you get a hang of it, you will see it’s so easy.

1. Click “+ New Form” (name your form — they all come as untitled).
2. Next, you will see add new. Click it and you will get the below.

✳️ Play around both Google and Microsoft forms (or either) and do let me know how you get on. You can even share the form with me if you would like some feedback.

Flocrunch’s latest

What’s with the name? Is it really for safety teams? 🤷‍♀️

This week on social media, we shared the story behind the name Flocrunch.

I believe a name should have meaning and be recognisable. This is how I came up with the name after months of brainstorming…

✳️ I took WORKFLOW + CRUNCH because it was really about simplifying and cutting down aka crunching many of our over the top processes and avoidable manual labour. Shortened Workflow to FLOW + CRUNCH. Got rid of the W for “aesthetics” 😉 and FLOCRUNCH it became! Boom!