Mobile Forms: The Next Volume Mobile Enterprise Solution

A successful business model is built around the vision of exploiting a compelling market opportunity. This white paper identifies such a market opportunity in the field of volume mobile enterprise solutions and outlines a business model designed to take advantage of it.

The operational model of many organizations involves mobile professionals who work in the field and capture data using paper forms that are returned to the head office. Building inspectors for example, spend their time in the field going to buildings, conducting assessments and documenting their findings by filling paper forms on clipboards. At the end of the day the inspector drives to the office and drops off the completed forms. A data entry clerk interprets and transfers the data from the paper forms to the company's computer systems. This is a slow, error-prone and inefficient process that can be significantly improved if the right mobile technologies are used.

Until now, however, adoption of mobile solutions that replace traditional paper forms and clipboards has only been cost-effective in enterprises with large field workforces. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), that do not enjoy economies of scale, have often been challenged to justify the considerable investment and upfront cost of deployment. This has resulted in a large pent-up demand for a cost-effective mobile forms solution that can serve as a replacement for paper form clipboards and voice-based exchange of data.