1. Vendor Landscape: The Right eForms Solution
If process is a buster, eForms will automate.

2. Introduction
The eForms Vendor Landscape is a mix of new and established vendors addressing a field of different scenarios. Use cases will determine best fit.
This Research Is Designed For:
This Research Will Help You:
Enterprises seeking to select a solution for Forms Automation.
Their web conferencing use case may include:
Ad Hoc Form Automation
Departmental Process Support
Enterprise Mission Process Critical
Business Process Workflow Automation
Understand what’s new in the eForms market.
Evaluate eForms vendors and products for your enterprise needs.
Determine which products are most appropriate for particular use cases and scenarios.

3. Executive Summary
The eForms market is evolving away from the paper form entirely, replacing it with a rich UI and integration with both new digital media and more advanced mobile functionality.
Adobe LiveCycle and Acrobat, IBM Forms, and Autonomy LiquidOffice eForms are all champions within the market space.
Once value for money is taken into consideration, Adobe Acrobat and PerfectForms become the most compelling options, though both lack the functionality for the most complex and advanced large enterprise use cases.
Each product evaluated has a different set of features designed to cater to different needs based on process criticality and use cases. Choose your solution based on the criticality of your process, your use case, your industry, and your mobile needs.

4. Market Overview How it got here Where it’s going
Stemmed from early electronic facsimiles of standard business forms.
Initially forms could be downloaded, then routed to different steps.
Next, they could be completed entirely online but were still tied to the look and feel of the paper business form.
As electronic use and access increased, forms-driven business processes have evolved to become electronic only and never hit paper.
With more external stakeholders gaining electronic access, forms could exist entirely online and no longer be tied to a physical counterpart, i.e. the physical form metaphor is no longer a constraint. As a result, e-forms are employing more rich user interfaces.
Built-in Rich UI to optimize data input/output, improve user experience and decrease abandonment.
The emergence of digital media, e.g. new cameras and input methods, in personal devices is creating an increasingly digitized world, allowing more rich content to be built into forms.
Cloud-only vendors are appearing and allowing form data to be stored entirely in the cloud, without offering an on-premise solution at all.
Mobile form use, previously only enabling simple workflow participation (e.g. approvals) is expanding to more complex forms and tasks, and onto tablets for field operations, e.g. real estate, insurance, field sales.
As the market evolves, so do the features you need to evaluate. Pay close attention to rich UI, cloud vendors, and mobile functionality, as all three improve overall usability and decrease grief.

5. eForms Criteria & Weighting Factors
Features
Usability
Affordability
Architecture
Product Evaluation
The solution provides basic
and advanced feature/functionality.
Features
The five year TCO of the solution is economical.
Affordability
The solution’s dashboard and reporting tools are intuitive and easy to use.
Usability
Product
Vendor
The delivery method of the solution aligns with what is expected within the space.
Architecture
Vendor Evaluation
Vendor is profitable, knowledgeable, and will be around for the long-term.
Viability
Viability
Channel
Strategy
Reach
Vendor is committed to the space and has a future product and portfolio roadmap.
Strategy
Vendor offers global coverage and is able to sell and provide post-sales support.
Reach
Vendor channel strategy is appropriate and the channels themselves are strong.
Channel

6. The Info-Tech eForms Landscape
Champions receive high scores for most evaluation criteria and offer excellent value. They have a strong market presence and are usually the trend setters for the industry.
Emerging Players are newer vendors who are starting to gain a foothold in the marketplace. They balance product and vendor attributes, though score lower relative to market Champions.
Innovators have demonstrated innovative product strengths that act as their competitive advantage in appealing to niche segments of the market.
Market Pillars are established players with very strong vendor credentials, but with more average product scores.
For a complete description of Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape methodology, see the Appendix.

7. Every vendor has its strengths & weaknesses; Pick the one that works best for you
Product
Vendor
Features
Usability
Affordability
Architecture
Viability
Strategy
Reach
Channel
Adobe LiveCycle
Adobe Acrobat
Autonomy Cardiff
IBM Lotus Forms
MS InfoPath
Form Services
MS InfoPath Client
PerfectForms
Formatta
LincDoc
Harvey Ball scores are indicative of absolute performance ratings but are not an exact correlation. Exceptional performance receives a full ball, poor performance an empty one, with a range in between.

8. Adobe Acrobat and PerfectForms provide the best bang-for-your-buck, but may not have all the features you need
What is a Value Score?
On a relative basis, Adobe Acrobat maintained the highest Info-Tech Value Score of the vendor group. Vendors were indexed against Acrobat’s performance to provide a complete, relative view of their product offerings.
The Value Score indexes each vendor’s product offering and business strength relative to their price point. It does not indicate vendor ranking.
Vendors that score high offer more bang-for-the-buck (e.g. features, usability, stability, etc.) than the average vendor, while the inverse is true for those that score lower.
Price-conscious enterprises may wish to give the Value Score more consideration than those who are more focused on specific vendor/product attributes.
Sources:
To calculate the Value Score for each vendor, the affordability raw score was backed out, the product scoring reweighted, and the affordability score multiplied by the product of the Vendor and Product scores.

9. Every vendor in the game has the basic table stakes, but who goes above and beyond in the areas that matter to you?
The Table Stakes
What Does This Mean?
eForms can be pre-populated and integrate with data sources.
Data Integration & Pre-Population
Product provides a client for eForms users to fill out forms.
Form Fill
Product allows users to create and design their own eForms.
Form Design
Product supports its own signature system, a pubic certificate standard, or both.
Digital Signatures
The products assessed in this Vendor LandscapeTM meet, at the very least, the requirements outlined as Table Stakes.
Many of the vendors go above and beyond the outlined Table Stakes, some even do so in multiple categories. This section aims to highlight the products capabilities in excess of the criteria listed here.
If Table Stakes are all you need from your eForms solution, the only true differentiator for the organization is price. Otherwise, dig deeper to find the best price to value for your needs.

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