Yeah the idea is to replace our customers' current data collection and report writing process with our software. Could you elaborate more on what you mean by "Nobody wants to change "how" they fit the data collection piece into the rest of their processes"?
The automation comes in at the report writing stage. Instead of coming back to the office with a stack of notes and manually entering the data into a report template, the inspector will be able to automatically generate a completed inspection form from the data collected with the mobile application.
Thanks for the suggestion regarding document management functionality, it sounds interesting. Currently users can view previous inspections of a specific structure and all inspections performed by a specific user.
I'd challenge your statement that there's nothing available for some of your biggest potential markets, unless you're talking a more complete lifecycle solution specifically targeting verticals than just the data collection. Also, what's the "automation" component? To me that implies some form of automatic data collection or predictive workflow creation - both which are huge selling points, but hard to pull off.
Finally a key feature that you could consider are the document management aspects around data collection. Even big organizations do this poorly. The ability to accurately group and find related documents (like inspections over time or by project) tends to be missing in data collection. As a user I likely have one or more sets of related documents that fit together based on some component of my workflow that I share with a team, clients regulators and the public in different capacities. The most common solution I see is the network share and an email alias.
Good luck with your venture and enjoy the ride!