Mobile forms are applications designed for smartphones and tablets that allow for the creation and submission of forms with multiple types of form data. In most cases, mobile forms help companies with employees in the field streamline their data collection.
Mobile forms present a way for companies to fill and submit traditional paper forms like reports, audits, or inspections on mobile devices.
Businesses today often have an increasing need to enable workers in the field to collect data while outside of the office. Many companies, like construction and utility companies, employ a mobility strategy that equips these field workers with tablets and smartphones. Mobile forms solutions help those workers utilize their devices to collect and submit data in real-time. That data can be instantly shared with the main office, or input into another business system or workflow.
When work frequently takes you to projects in rural locations without a reliable cell or Internet connection, a field data collection app like mobile forms provides a solution for completing paperwork and returning it to the office more quickly. Because of the offline functionality of mobile forms, data can be collected in real-time, regardless of where a jobsite is located.
Managers often need to put together a report of work completed at the end of each week to send updates to customers and internal stakeholders. Teams using forms on mobile devices have access to that information sooner and can provide more accurate and frequent updates.
A logistics or other company with a fleet will have drivers completing deliveries and jobs. For each haul done, drivers often complete several paper forms. With mobile forms, these drivers can complete their required paperwork, including any necessary photos, GPS and time stamping data in the field, and send it back to the office instantly.
This gives the office a real-time understanding of the status of the job, vehicle, and driver. Having access to this data sooner allows dispatchers to keep clients better informed of progress at every stage of transport and delivery.
When work is completed on a site outside of the office requests will be made for parts, materials and supplies. When a request has been submitted through a mobile forms app, a Purchase Order (PO) can be created automatically. That way, employees can continue working and don’t need to wait for the accounting department to get back to them with a PO.
Employees can take photos of receipts from purchases, so they don’t have to worry about losing receipts or needing to mail or scan them in. This is also helpful for accounting because these PO requests can be sent to them directly. When accounting later receives the bills, they can match up the POs and make sure that each purchase is authorized.
Mobile forms typically cost between $12 and $50 per license per month for an annual subscription. The price may increase depending on the features needed. Mobile forms solutions are usually sold to businesses as a Software-as-a-Service solution (SaaS) on a per-user basis. Larger organizations needing many licenses often receive custom volume discount pricing. The monthly investment cost for mobile forms is priced to result in savings by reducing time, paper, and associated expenses. Total return on investment is achieved by 84% of organizations using mobile forms within months.
Forms for mobile devices can be created with mobile forms software on the web. A drag-and-drop, or other simplified form builder, is used to create and deploy forms to the desired team’s or employee’s mobile device(s). Responsive, feature-rich form builders make it easy to learn how to build and use mobile forms. Mobile form builders make it easy to create new forms, or recreate digital versions of paper forms companies are already using. Users can create custom forms with easy to organize drag and drop elements, and even see a preview of the form on a mobile device. If you can use a mobile form builder like ours, then you will know how to create forms for ipad.
Forms automation refers to the process of digitizing paper-based business functions like form submission to eliminate the number of manual steps. With mobile forms automation, business forms completed on smartphones and tablets can trigger automated workflow steps like sending an email and text message, creating a PDF, or adding a file to a cloud storage system or web database. Submitting a single form can trigger an automation sequence, sending data to a manager’s email, delivering photos to Dropbox or Google Drive, saving a copy of the form to your project management database, or any other number of actions. The destinations for your form data can be set up when creating your forms. These automation steps can all help businesses go paperless.
