101 Uses for Digital Pen & Paper Technology

The digital pen & paper technology is still pretty new and still has a long way to go in terms of market penetration, that’s why I always love doing a demo to someone who has not see the pens before usually rattle off a few ideas of how the digital pen could be used to benefit different people and industries.

So for those of you out there who would like to see a few ideas on how the digital pen can be implemented to help your business or profession, have a look at this list:

Serviced Based Businesses

• Service reports - bring them back to the office in real time, keep your techs out on the road and improve your billable hours.
• Time sheets - ever struggle to get time sheets back from your guys out in the field? If they fill in a daily or weekly timesheet, it can be back in the office before your payroll staff even need them.
• Purchase orders - get your field staff completing purchase orders and and get a purchase order back to them in seconds.

Sales Force

• Complete order forms on site, have it sent in real time so that the order can be processed whilst the rep is still on-site. Maybe even have an automated system that sends an sms to the rep while they are still on-site stating when the delivery will be or what items are on back order.
• Complete an invoice and have it return to the office to update the accounting system without the need for data entry. Accept payment and note the account number, cheque number or even credit card number.
• Update your company’s CRM system while sitting with a new client - all by writing on a note pad.

Law Enforcement

• Ticketing - council parking offices, police, university parking offices, rangers - any form of infringement notification enforcement where a ticket or fine applies. Simply write on your note pad and send the data back to the processing centre - no need for data entry. Photos of the infringement can also be captured & sent by a compatible mobile phone.
• Reporting - Police always write in their little notebooks then retype their incident report when they are back in the station - imagine being able to write on a notebook which automatically populates the report fields saving hours a week of retyping. Saving police time in their reporting can give them more time in the field.

Students

• Perfect tool for note taking. Write down everything that you need and automatically transfer the notes to a Word document when you return home. This saves lugging around a laptop or tablet PC and also saves the stress when the battery of said laptop or tablet PC runs out.

Professionals

• As with students, it too is a perfect and unobtrusive note taking device. Typing away on a laptop in a meeting is a bit intrusive and often not the best way to interact. Writing with a pen on some paper is polite and unobtrusive. You get the same result at the end of the day - an electronic editable file that you can work with.
• E-mail. You can also send e-mail from a piece of paper. That’s right - using your digital pen and special Datateq notebook, you can send an e-mail from plain paper. Send off an update to someone outside the room during a meeting, request someone come down quickly to drop off an urgent document or simply e-mail the minutes of the meeting to all present.

Reporting

• Secret shopper. Most well respected shop chains and fast food chains employee some kind of secret shopper service where an unknown customer`shops’ at a store and does an evaluation based on the customers perspective. I know McDonald’s stores get one every week. So imagine that the secret shopper could complete the form and immediately have the data updated onto the central system so that the scores can be tracked. The store can be updated much faster as well with a copy of the visit on the same day as opposed to several days later in the mail.
• Building and pest inspections. Everyone buying a house does a building and pest inspection. If you were an inspector, instead of filling in the forms on site then going home to retype everything again - why not use a digital pen to complete the form then update automatically into your report template and have it e-mailed to the client - all while you are still standing there with the client.
• OH&S reporting - on site safety audits - fill in the form, update the back office system, have copies available to all parties immediately while you are still on site.
• Audits - pretty much anything you can think off.

Log Books

• Lift maintenance log books. Keep your log book in the lift - get a copy back in the office.
• Fire - any fire based log book - do it on a single page instead of triplicate and get your copy back in the office.
• Aircraft Maintenance - permanent aircraft logs in the aircraft, but electronic copies sent immediately to the aircraft owner and the servicing company.
• Security company incident reports. As part of liquor licensing laws, permanent log books are required to remain on premises, but security companies also want to access and maintain a record - do it with a digital pen - log book stays on site, electronic copies go automatically to the licensee and the security company.
• Virtually anything where a paper copy is required to remain on site and other parties have an interest or right to access that data.

Journalists

• Write your report or article anywhere in the world and lodge it instantly and electronically. No more dictation or transcribing - write it once and get an electronic copy with all your writings converted to text.

That’s enough for now - not quite 101 applications - but you get the general drift of it all. Anything that you can write on paper can be converted instantly into an electronic copy and sent anywhere in the world as a PDF and/or data file. No longer do you need to be content with faxing, dictating or transcribing information that has already been written down. Now with digital pen & paper technology - do it once - do it with Datateq.

Feel free to add your other uses in the comments section.