Nigerian Startup Formplus is a cloud-based, enterprise-focused online form building solution that helps SMEs, Educators, Nonprofits, Recruiters, among others, efficiently collect, manage, and store data using multiple endpoints, including their cloud storage service. In an interview with Innovation Village, Communications Team Lead, Jadesola Odujole expounds on Formplus and also perspectively gives an insight into the fast-evolving Nigerian startup ecosystem.
Can you give a brief history on Formplus?
Formplus as a startup was launched in 2015. It started out as a simple tool and later evolved into a data collection service for businesses and individuals. Currently, we have users in over 100 countries and they span across various sectors such as Construction, Education, Business, Transportation and Recruitment.
What is Formplus all about and what does it have to offer?
Formplus is a cloud-based, enterprise-focused online form building solution that helps SMEs, Educators, Nonprofits, Recruiters, among others, efficiently collect, manage, and store data using multiple endpoints, including their cloud storage service.
Users can sign up to Formplus, create simple forms that can carry out complex work processes like Job Applications, HR Workflows and Approvals, Registrations, Status Reports among others.
What motivated the creation of Formplus?
I’ll answer this by talking about what keeps us going. Formplus serves a varied customer base and as simple as it is online forms can be the lifeblood of a business. Think about it, these online forms are used in Indonesia’s largest ride-hailing company Go-Jek to manage all their driver recruitment. If a company like that is unable to efficiently manage this part of their business, other processes will grind to a halt.
We are driven by the fact that we are helping people gather data from multiple sources using simple tools, into a central database. The continued use and dependence of our customers on some of our important features like file uploads, digital signatures, online payments, workflows also serve as motivation to us.
What is unique about the services Formplus has to offer?
2 Things – Amazing features and Great customer support.
We offer hands-on 24/7 support to all our customers and more importantly, we listen. We listen to their complaints, suggestions, and feedback and this helps us with our decision-making process concerning our features.
Apart from this we also have a lot of unique features in one form builder with incredible pricing. We’re talking about offline forms, online signatures, workflows, repeating data tables, etc. We have an amazing offering of features.
How does Formplus work?
The basis of Formplus is allowing anyone to be able to create forms anywhere. The first step involves you signing up/signing in to use the Builder. In the Builder, you can drag and drop fields to collect names, phone numbers, emails, signature, files, payments etc. You also have the multi-choice field so if you need your respondents to make choices, this works for them.
Once you’re done in the builder section, you can go on to customize the form you have just built. You can add your logos, add a background image, switch up the colors and font size and just make your form look exactly the way you want it to look.
After customizing your form, you can then share your forms via social media, email or as a QR code. We also have the option to allow people to customize their form links to exactly what they want it to be. Once responses start to come in, you can analyze them for a number of things, abandonment rate, completion rate, location, devices and even the type of browser your respondent uses.
You can also send reports with forms and create workflows using Formplus forms. Check out all our features here.
What has the traction been like since its launch?
It’s been an amazing ride so far, our number of users has greatly increased and we’ve surpassed the 400,000 average monthly submissions. We are profitable and as always, on the lookout for great deals and investments that will help us strengthen our infrastructure.
We started out with Formplus being a free tool but currently, it operates as a subscription service where customers pay monthly (as low as $20) or yearly to be able to create forms and collect responses. There is a free trial period for prospective users and companies to test the product and then make a decision.
Due to requests from large organizations, we recently launched an Enterprise scheme so that we can tailor Formplus to suit even more specific needs. You can find out more here.
What were the challenges encountered and achievements recorded so far since Formplus launched?
In terms of challenges, we’ll say building the right culture and fit for what we are trying to achieve. But we have been able to overcome this, showing that first; Formplus is about growth – of the members of the team first even before the product. That’s why we have members of the team as active members in Python Nigeria, and GDG Lagos, as well those who are leading coding classes in their communities.
Our motto is “There is always help when you need it” and it transcends to everything.
From your point of view how would rate the Nigerian startup ecosystem and in what areas do you think the ecosystem needs support?
It is growing. Amidst challenges and obstacles from different angles (bureaucracy, power, funding, etc.), it’s easy to see that we are building something that would last. We wrote this article on the ease of registering a business in 8 countries of the world, and one thing is clear if we do not reduce the amount of red tape that a startup would need to cut through to get on their feet, sustainability might be a problem.
We also need to develop more practical talents and build communities around them. Beyond going to school and University, more life and business skills need to be taught so that Startup founders are more prepared for the world of business.
What advice do you have for prospective African entrepreneurs out there?
Find a problem before proffering a solution. If you start the other way round, you’ll get discouraged when customers are not patronizing your product and things are not working as you think they should.
Find the problem, build a solution, then they will come.
What are the future plans for Formplus?
Formplus already has a huge customer base outside of Africa – most of our current customers and users are from the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. What we would like to see more of, is African entrepreneurs and companies becoming more purposeful with their data collection and integrating Formplus with their processes.
One of the highlights of 2018 was knowing that we were being used by the ERGP Focus Labs to attract investors into the Nigerian Economy. We hope to see more of that as well.
Our offline forms feature makes data collection in areas with little to no internet connection a lot easier. Field agents and researchers can use these simple forms to collate reports and data from remote areas. We hope to see this gain more widespread adoption.
