Formotus' cool patent-pending technology automatically turns Microsoft InfoPath forms into mobile forms.
Report your expenses, fill in a time sheet, scan a barcode, survey customers or track your inventory, without spending the money to re-build your forms for mobile devices.
By Alpa Agarwal on Thu, 10/15/09 - 7:12pm.Formotus is really cool! Their technology allows businesses of any size to instantly convert their Microsoft InfoPath forms into mobile forms. These forms can be deployed immediately over the air to the mobile devices of employees. Employees can download the forms and immediately start using them. They can not only access the data in the forms, but edit the data or use blank forms to enter new data into.
And, it's a simple business model. Businesses pay a subscription rate per user, however, many forms they deploy.
Remote employees don't need to have always-on mobile connectivity. Half-finished forms can be saved on their devices for transmission at a later time.
Formotus forms work on Windows Mobile devices. They are based on Microsoft InfoPath and are compatible with Microsoft Sharepoint.
Here's a video on Formotus Windows Mobile Business Applications on YouTube.
As Formotus explains on their web site, service workers can pick up their routes, salespeople can see their leads and health care workers can access a patient's prescriptions. Further, both office and mobile works can collaborate by opening and saving changes to the same shared forms on a Microsoft Sharepoint site.
A few of the features are the following:
Drag and Drop Development Environment - The development environment is drag and drop using Microsoft InfoPath, which is more than likely to already be installed on your PC.
Simple and Fast Software Distribution - The Formotus software as well as the forms you create are installed over-the-air, so there is no need to distribute software on disks or connect cables to phones.
Pre-Designed Forms - Formotus offers a library of pre-designed forms you can modify, so you don't have to build them yourself.
Web-Based Formotus Management Console - All forms are managed and deployed from the Formotus Management Console.
Standards-Based & Interoperable - The Formotus platform is built using standards-based XML technologies such as W3C XML Schema, WSDL, UDDI and XPath. It can connect with backend servers running SQL, Dynamics, SAP or Oracle or cloud-based services such as Microsoft Windows Azure Platform, Amazon Web Services or Google AppEngine.
- About The Social Enterprise
Alpa Agarwal is Director, Product Marketing at eBay Inc. In her role she works with the engineering team to release new features to enhance the shopping user experience on eBay.com. Prior to eBay, Alpa worked with the engineering team at Microsoft's MSN.com to release new social & community features, working with partners such as Facebook.
Alpa has also held marketing communications roles in Microsoft's developer division working with startups.
Prior to that, Alpa led a global team at Microsoft to identify market trends. She regularly advised Microsoft’s senior leadership team, including Bill Gates, resulting in new acquisitions, technology investments and strategic corporate shifts.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Alpa founded MarketingCafe.com, an online community for marketers. She also worked at Sprint where she built a successful new product pipeline.
Alpa has taught in various Executive MBA programs, authored numerous articles and been quoted in international business journals. She has an MBA from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Alpa is based in Silicon Valley and can be reached at Alpa@AlpaAgarwal.com.
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