Five years ago: Formic takes drudgery out of data collection

First published 24 January, 1997

Formic 3 for Windows 95 and NT (£7,500 + VAT) has seven powerful modules which can be bought separately, covering scanning (£4,000 + VAT), design (£1,000 + VAT) and statistics (£500 + VAT).

The user can design and print forms which can include tick boxes and panels for handwritten responses as it simultaneously creates databases for the forms. The completed forms can then be scanned and analysed using an optical character recognition engine, and the data is slotted into the pre-created databases. The program natively converts the gathered data into charts or lets the user export it into other formats.

Formic's director Keith Negal emphasised the speed of the whole process: "When customers see the results, the price is irrelevant." He added Formic's larger users include Which? magazine and The Royal College of Surgeons.