How Hardcraft Industries cut supplier surveys and credit applications from 15–20 minutes to under a minute
Hardcraft Industries, Inc. is a family-owned precision metal fabricator in San Jose, California, making custom sheet-metal and CNC-machined products such as the enclosures and racks used by power utilities and other industrial customers. Every new customer or vendor relationship brings a supplier qualification survey, a vendor setup packet or a commercial credit application to fill out before any work can begin. With Instafill.ai filling them from one company profile, each form takes 30–60 seconds instead of 15–20 minutes.
At a glance
- Company Hardcraft Industries, Inc.
- Industry Precision metal fabrication
- Location San Jose, California, US
- Forms Supplier quality surveys, vendor setup packets, commercial credit applications
- Volume 1–2 forms a week
-
Results
30–60 s per form, down from 15–20 minutes
~95% less time per form
1 profile in a spreadsheet, reused on every packet - Catalog forms Atlanta Commercial Tire Business Account Credit Application, WestRock Credit Application
- Form categories Business credit forms, Commercial credit forms
The challenge
The packets come from partners such as Parpro PTI and American Wire Group, and each is short but dense: a few pages of boxes and tables asking for roughly the same things every time: the legal business name and address, tax IDs and registration details, accounting and purchasing contacts, bank and trade references, credit acknowledgments and signature blocks. About 90% of the answers are identical from one form to the next.
Most arrive as flat PDFs with no fillable fields, so the only option was to open the attachment and fill it in by hand, 15–20 minutes a form. Copying the same profile into yet another layout made it easy to miss a reference line, mistype a number or leave a checkbox blank, and every packet felt like starting from scratch.
"There's just a bunch of repetitive stuff we get and it's a waste of time for a human being to put our name into it… In the perfect world, I guess, have some library of forms we have already filled out and have AI be able to read this library and just go, okay, here's a new form. Auto populate it and then a human can review it and make sure everything looks good before sending it."
— Brandt Kwiram, CEO and owner, Hardcraft Industries, Inc.
The solution
Hardcraft put everything a partner commonly asks for into one Excel spreadsheet: the legal name, DBA, EIN and establishment date, phone and fax numbers and addresses, a bank reference, 3–5 trade references with full contact details, and standard business information such as the D&B number and business type. That spreadsheet is the company's reusable profile. It has grown past 200 rows covering several form types, and Instafill.ai picks out only what each form asks for. Previously filled forms, bank statements and other documents can go into it as well.
Each blank form is uploaded once, as received. Instafill.ai detects its fields, and a flat or scanned PDF is first made fillable with flat-to-fillable conversion. Hardcraft started with its 2–3 most common forms, tested the first fill and refined the profile data. The forms automated so far include the Parpro PTI Supplier Quality Survey, a multi-page questionnaire on quality systems, certifications and capabilities, and the 3-page AWG Sales Credit Application, with company information, a bank reference, three trade references, terms and conditions and a signature block.
From then on, a new form is filled by choosing it, attaching the profile and reviewing the filled PDF, which typically needs no changes, before downloading it and sending it to the partner. A field that does come out wrong can be flagged to improve later fills.
The results
| Before | With Instafill.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Time per form | 15–20 minutes | 30–60 seconds |
| Company details | Typed into every packet | Kept once in a spreadsheet profile |
| Flat PDFs | Filled in by hand | Converted once, then filled |
| Transcription errors | Missed lines, mistyped numbers | None |
That is about 95% less time per form. Forms are no longer a task to put off: a new vendor qualification request can be answered as soon as it arrives, without hunting for company information across files, and the time goes back to manufacturing. Next, Hardcraft plans to add templates as new partnerships come in, widen the profile for new kinds of questions and use API integration to process forms received by email automatically.
