The move from paper to electronic forms is an essential step in
developing a modern organization's nervous system, but you
should use the change to improve processes that are central to
your business. A digital nervous system is easy to build on. A
good network, a good e-mail system, and easy-to-build webpages are everything you need for getting rid of internal paper forms,
too. Our internal tools have two goals: to use software to handle
routine tasks, so that our knowledge workers don't waste time
and energy; and to free people to do more difficult work and
handle unusual situations. Our internal developers use the
"sort-boiled egg" rule: A user must be able to get into and out of
most administrative tools within three minutes. This makes sure
that we don't create clumsy tools and cause more work overall.