5 Signs Your Field Team Needs a Better Data Collection App
If your field crew still carries clipboards — or uses an app that crashes offline — you're leaving productivity on the table. Here are five warning signs.
1. Your team re-enters data at the office
When field workers collect data on paper or in apps that don't sync reliably, someone has to type it all into a spreadsheet later. That double-entry wastes 4+ hours per week on average and introduces transcription errors.
2. You've lost data to bad connectivity
If your app requires a constant internet connection, every dead zone is a risk. One dropped request during a rural inspection can mean an entire day's work disappears.
3. Photos aren't linked to records
Taking photos with a phone camera and manually matching them to inspection records is tedious and error-prone. A good field app attaches geotagged photos directly to each record.
4. Exporting data requires an enterprise plan
Some platforms lock GIS export (GeoJSON, Shapefile) behind their most expensive tier. If your team uses QGIS or ArcGIS, you shouldn't need to pay enterprise prices for basic interoperability.
5. You're paying per device, not per user
Per-device licensing means every tablet and phone adds cost. Modern field apps charge per user and let them work on any device — phone in the field, laptop at the office.
What to look for
A modern field data collection app should be offline-first by design, sync automatically when connectivity returns, and export to open formats on every plan. That's exactly what Mapalyze was built to do.
