The Top 5 Mobile Form Benefits

Making the switch from paper forms to mobile forms is done for a variety of reasons. But the most obvious ones are to increase productivity and to lower operational costs.

Digital forms on smartphones and tablets is no longer a trend, it’s the way of today’s business processes. According to a Frost & Sullivan report, the estimated market size for mobile forms is over 22 million subscribers. Indeed, companies that are still using paper forms are playing catch-up to their more mobile-savvy competitors.

Top Mobile Form Benefits

1. Speed – You can’t quite get information yesterday, but we’re getting closer. The ability for field users to collect data on mobile devices and instantly submit it via the push of a button is game-changing. The old model had workers trying to find a fax machine from the job site, or even worse, needlessly driving paper forms back to the office. Talk about a waste of time.

Add in the fact that mobile form solutions like ProntoForms can also dispatch partially filled in forms to user devices in the field, and you’re talking about total elimination of field worker trips to the office.

2. Process streamlining – Mobile form deployment really takes a business process to the next level. The information you’re now collecting and submitting using mobile devices is integrated with your back office system and popular cloud services, such as SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, etc. The bottom line? Introducing mobile forms into your business processes can mean an end to costly manual data entry. It also means that the collected information can be more easily shared among team members.

3. Capture better information – Paper forms certainly have limitations. Media rich data cannot be collected. And you also have human error and employee handwriting interpretation to contend with. Mobile forms have fail safes in place, ensuring that all information is properly collected.

In addition, having the ability to take photos of a job site situation (even sketching on top of the image) and including them within a form can really raise the bar for field data collection. Mobile forms can also capture client signatures, bar/QR codes and voice-to-text.

4. Improve employee management – The rollout of a mobile form solution comes with increased awareness and accountability of employees in the field. Forms on mobile devices include GPS and time stamps, letting managers know exactly when and where a form was filled out. Managers are also able to create individual and group form permissions, giving the appropriate form and data access for each user.

5. Unlock hidden trends and truths – Since the recorded mobile data is better organised and available immediately within your systems, the ability to understand and sift through the data is automatically greater.

The ProntoForms solution features ProntoForms Analytics, an optional Business Intelligence add-on that can reveal potential business opportunities and challenges you might have otherwise missed. Moreover, reports can be easily generated, giving company executives critical business process insight before making decisions.