Computerworld - Before 2009, technicians at Carmedic were filling out 80,000 invoices a year by hand. Today, they still fill out invoices by hand, but they do so with a system that uses digital pens and paper and wirelessly transmits the information on the forms to a central server in Illinois for processing.
The digital pen and paper system has vastly reduced the time needed to process invoices and has cut down on lost paperwork and errors resulting from misinterpretations of messy handwriting, said Dan Binkley, president of Roxana, Ill.-based Carmedic. The company has about 100 technician-partners in 20 states who travel to auto dealerships to repair dents and dings. They use a process called Paintless Dent Removal, which costs a fraction of the price of getting a dent fixed and painted at an auto body shop, Binkley said in an interview.
Before Carmedic adopted the digital pen and paper system, all the paper generated from four-copy invoices was "causing serious logjams," he said. The company was at the point where it either had to hire more people to process the invoices or find a digital approach.
Using a custom wireless handheld device with a keyboard or pen input was judged too expensive and disruptive. Then a Verizon Wireless representative suggested digital pen and paper using Anoto digital pens and digital writing software from ExpeData.
With the new system, Carmedic technicians fill out paper invoice forms, and the movements of the pen are recorded onto a chip in the pen. When the form is completed, the data on the pen is transferred via Bluetooth to a BlackBerry, which automatically transfers the data over the Verizon network to Carmedic's server.
The total cost of the system is less than $1,000 per technician, with each pen costing about $250. Binkley said he keeps several of the digital pens handy in case a technician loses one.
Carmedic could have chosen a BlackBerry-only application or a system that uses rugged smartphones and doesn't require digital pens and paper, but Binkley said such an approach would have been too disruptive.
"We saw [digital pen and paper] as a better solution because it involves very little change," Binkley said. "One thing every company struggles with is change. If we were going to ask every technician to buy a [customized handheld] for thousands of dollars, then the device should be able to drive the van the technicians use."
The technicians still write on invoices that are very similar to the ones they used to use. "They didn't miss a beat" with the transition, he said. Having the digital information based on converting handwriting to text also makes the process more precise. A single technician can fill out 20 invoices a day.
One side benefit of the new approach was that Carmedic standardized on BlackBerry devices and signed up for a wireless plan with Verizon that dropped phone costs from about $8,200 to $3,200 a month.
The system, implemented last year, resulted in a small number of errors, but nearly all them were the result of user error, Binkley said.
The digital pens require paper that is printed with a matrix of tiny dots that serve as reference points for the pens. Binkley said at first it was a challenge to get printing companies to create the invoices, which are bigger than standard invoice sheets.
A number of companies make the digital pens, and many such pens are sold to schools where they're used as learning tools. In addition to Anoto's offerings, other digital pens include the LogiPen, the Echo by Livescribe, and the Pegasus. Binkley said the system of pen and software that Carmedic chose was recommended by Verizon.
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at 
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