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.
Converting to digital forms on smartphones and tablets is no longer a trend, it’s the way of today’s business processes. Companies that are still using paper forms are playing catch-up to their more mobile-savvy competitors.
Top Five 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 to be transcribed and filed away, then retrieved again in the case of an audit. Talk about a waste of time. Submitting forms from the field to a back office or digital storage location with the click of a button, 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. By leveragingmobile forms, route data between the office and field employees with one tap of the Submit button, minimizing data entry and re-entry, tedious paperwork, paper transportation, and storage costs. You can even route data to different destinations such as SalesForce, SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and QuickBooks. The bottom line? By implementing mobile forms into your business process, you can save time and money by minimizing data collection errors and streamlining your processes.
3. Collect Actionable Data
Checkboxes and written entry fields can only provide so much information. Collecting data is not just simple yes and no’s, or writing something down. Collecting data means collecting rich data – being able to capture photos, sketch on those photos, capture audio notes, or video, and scan barcodes. Having the ability to improve the multimedia information that you can collect in context for any audits makes you much more efficient and increases the capabilities for you to respond to your peers, partners, customers, or regulatory authority. Capturing data that is date stamped, time-stamped and geo-stamped with all the information that you need serves to vastly improve your accountability and compliance.
4. Improve Compliance
The rollout of a mobile form solution comes with increased awareness and accountability of employees in the field. With mobile forms, you can automatically dispatch the most up-to-date mobile forms to field workers, trigger email or SMS notifications based on data submissions for immediate action, improving reaction time which can be crucial. Also, forms on mobile devices can include single sign-on, GPS, and time stamps, letting managers know exactly who, where, and when 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. Track and Analyze Hidden Trends
Since the recorded mobile data is better organized and available immediately within your systems, the ability to understand and sift through the data is automatically greater. ProntoForms’ Enterprise solution has sophisticated analytics platform capabilities to track both data you collect in the field, and compare to external data. Moreover, reports can be easily generated, giving company executives, and stakeholders, access to critical business insights almost instantly.
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