Forms in word: a new concept in government forms: frustration with bureaucracy spawns an Alaskan-owned business.

With a combined 44 years of experience working in the offices of various engineering, environmental, legal and other firms, Lori Jo Oswald and Evelyn Wright had worked with plenty of government forms. In this electronic age, they were tired of dusting off typewriters to fill in hard copies of forms that were not available in a computer-friendly format.

They knew there was a better way. Little did they know that solving the problem would be the start of their own business. Forms in Word, a three-person company based in Palmer, creates easy-to-use Microsoft Word versions of government forms.

A HEAVY BURDEN

One particular form was responsible for launching the new venture. After more than 25 years of using one form--known as SF 254/255--to select architects and engineers for federal contracts, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers switched to something new, form SF 330. This meant that offices across the country had to abandon their old software, Word documents, and other methods of working with the old form, and start from scratch. Oswald set to work, and created SF 330 in Word.

Suspecting that others might like her version of form SF 330, Oswald, who is also a technical writer with a doctorate in English, posted it on her Wordsworth Writing & Editing Web site (www.wordsworthwriting.net). The response was overwhelming; six months after selling her first SF 330, Forms in Word was born in June 2004.

At the company's Web site, www. formsinword.com, customers can now peruse a database of more than 3,000 federal, state and local government forms created over the past couple of years in response to client requests. If customers do not find what they are looking for, they can request the creation of a new form.

Steadily increasing sales since the birth of Forms for Word--from an average of $1,200 per month in 2004, to $3,200 monthly in 2005, to over $6,000 per month by the end of March 2006, as reported by Oswald--demonstrate the demand for the service. So far, the company has been too busy to advertise.

"Almost all of our clients have stumbled on our site through Web searches or heard about us from friends and coworkers, so we think we have done amazingly well for a small business in Alaska with no time to market," Oswald said.

CLIENTS GALORE

Forms in Word's clients have included law offices, realtors and appraisers, government agencies, medical professionals, nonprofit organizations, architectural, engineering, and construction firms, and others located across the country and the globe.

"We especially love our military clients," Oswald said. "We keep the Army forms at $5 each even though one form can take the three of us up to 20 hours to complete, if it's a tough one."

The Microsoft Word forms can be filled in, saved, printed, and reused.

"We wanted user-friendly forms for those who struggle with filling out PDFs," says Oswald. "We just wanted to create simple Word documents for clients." Forms in Word also includes automatic form fill and checkbox features (with instructions on these Word features) to make filling out forms even easier.

Oswald said her company has found a niche because so many government forms are supplied as PDF versions that can not be filled in electronically, are poor quality scans of original documents, can not be saved once they are filled in, or are otherwise cumbersome to work with.

BETTER THAN FREE

Forms in Word's owners are sensitive to the question of why people should want to pay for a form that is available free.

"We say right on our Web site that these forms are available on government Web sites as free PDFs," Oswald said. "But some people don't want to fill out a form by hand or want to be able to save and reuse a document, or are just more comfortable using Word documents," Wright says. "We offer an alternative. Our documents also offer flexibility that PDFs don't."

Chris Foster, marketing manager for the civil engineering and surveying firm F. Robert Bell and Associates in Anchorage, had a favorable experience with Forms in Word when his company applied for a government contract in Southeast Alaska. "Forms in Word's SF 330 form saved us a great deal of time and effort while putting together a U.S. Forest Service proposal," Foster said. "It is easy to get started with, and the end product is formatted in a clear, legible manner."

Even government employees have taken advantage of the service. "Many of our clients work for federal agencies and find our forms so much easier to use than the ones they have at work," Oswald says. "Word forms save time and money, in my view, and make for happy customers."

In addition to co-owners Wright and Oswald, who research, design and test each form, Forms in Word employs Gregory Drummond to proofread each form carefully against the government's original.

"We don't use scanning software to make our documents; we type them in if needed," Oswald said. "Gregory checks every letter, every Word, every cell, to be sure the forms are correct. From early on, we realized we needed to have a quality control check of each form, even if it meant we did not make a profit on a form."

Oswald summed up the value of her company's service: "A company could spend hours or days formatting a proposal, or they could use us. We hope they'll make us do the work for them."

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