SMBs and large enterprises are increasingly turning to mobile solutions to replace manual business processes with sophisticated digital workflows. But not all mobile software platforms completely eliminate the “manual” part of data collection and sharing. Some solutions can force organizations to revert back to the antiquated processes they sought to abandon. If you’re relying on a less capable solution, you may find yourself with limited options when submitting forms.
Simultaneously submit reports to multiple destinations
Even the most basic mobile forms solutions allow you to send your form data to a variety of destinations – email, Google Drive, etc. However, they rarely let you easily send a single form to multiple recipients at once. For example, a safety inspector may need to alert a manager of a critical EHS breach, but must also submit the report to an analytics engine for compliance tracking. The inspector in this case might have to manually submit the form to other destinations, perhaps by submitting the form via the mobile app, then retrieving the PDF output from the sent box, and finally emailing the PDF to other recipients or back-office systems.
ProntoForms, on the other hand, is a configurable solution that can easily send form data to multiple destinations using context-sensitive workflows. The guy in the field doesn’t have to do anything manually as each workflow can automatically send data simultaneously to your back-office system, office staff, analytics engine, and pretty much any other cloud service you can think of. Connections to off-the-shelf online services can be set up using easy-to-use click-and-drag tools, but it’s also easy to connect to any business and/or analytics system using REST API or other pre-built enterprise integrations (such as FTP/Secure FTP, HTTP GET, HTTP File Upload, HTTP POST/PUT, Template-Driven HTTP, WebDav, and Sharepoint).
Filter specific data to specific destinations
Field workers collect a wide range of data from the field – free text, numbers, pass/fail assessments, photos, sketches, audio recordings, date/time stamps, GPS locations, and much more. Not all company stakeholders need access to every piece of data collected in a form. Your accounting department probably doesn’t require notes or photos from a safety inspection, but they need invoices and estimates for repairs. The audio recordings of a piece of machinery is useful to a technician, but less important to senior management.
It’s easy to configure the ProntoForms solution to automatically send photos, inspection pass/fail data, and notes to team managers, estimates and invoices to the finance team, and KPI metrics to the analytics system.
The ProntoForms software platform is even flexible enough to let the form dynamically determine what information is routed to what destination depending on a few key parameters. For instance, if a safety inspector submits an EHS report that notes a potential issue, the form can be automatically sent to an EHS professional who specializes in that area. The field worker doesn’t have to determine who should receive the report; that task is left up to the mobile form. Inspection forms can also be scored to rank the severity of an EHS issue – and whether it should be dealt with immediately or later. If a critical safety breach is discovered, SMS notifications can alert EHS professionals to act immediately.
Form administrators can combine any number of parameters to build extremely sophisticated and streamlined workflows that reach internal and external stakeholders as well as online services, regulatory bodies, and business systems.
Context-sensitive connections and workflows are just one aspect of the ProntoForms platform that differentiates us from other solutions. The entire platform is built around simplicity and ease-of-use, yet allows for powerful customization at every step of the way – meeting customer needs around the world.
If you need to improve productivity and connect your field workers with stakeholders and business systems, give us a call. We’re here to help.
