It's Time to Automate Data Collection and Storage

Let’s be honest. If you’re into marketing or sales, you have certainly collected data from your prospects or customers online. 

Now chances are that you have spent more time collecting, storing and sharing data than you should have, and that’s fine. 

But now that you’re here, I’m going to show you how easy it is to automate this process while also ensuring that your data is secure. 

Data collection basics: Formstack

The first step towards this is to use a versatile and secure data collection tool such as Formstack. 

It allows you to easily create smart, customizable forms while collaborating with others in or outside your organization. And we’re not just talking about online forms. 

Formstack enables offline form filling via its mobile app wherein you can collect data anywhere even without connectivity while ensuring that no requisite information is lost in transit. 

You might be wondering, what about data security and data governance? Well, Formstack is serious about protecting your privacy- you can learn about their security measures here. 

Lastly, if you wish to collect payments via your forms, Formstack’s payment processor integrations allow you to collect various types of payments, seamlessly and securely.

Automating data collection with Make

So now that you know about an easy and safe method to collect data, it’s time to throw in some automation so that you don’t spend hours sifting through data to organize it and act upon it. 

Using Make, you can leverage the Formstack integration to not only automatically send the data to other cloud services, but also segment and manipulate the data before it is consumed.

The example scenario above is for an event RSVP form wherein one will receive a customized email based on one’s response to the questions on the form. 

While this is a very simple example, you can choose to do a lot more with your data. Make’s inbuilt functions enable you to manipulate the data irrespective of its format while data stores allow you to store a copy of your data securely, without worrying about it being modified or deleted even by mistake.

Forms into documents with WebMerge

Another really great use case is to dynamically create documents based on the data collected via a form. 

You can do so using WebMerge that is a powerful tool to automate the process of document creation. 

On WebMerge, you can choose from all major formats like PDF, Word Doc, Excel, Powerpoint and even HTML documents to create contracts, proposals, event tickets and more.

With data leaks and hacks becoming pervasive, it’s more important than ever that data collection is given more thought and the process is devoid of human error. 

For more ideas and inspiration, you may check out Make templates and filter them by the services you already use. And to check out all the supported apps and services, visit the integrations page. 

Happy automating!