Hello,
Yes, you could do this in a background process, but it may not be very easy.
You could:
1. Set up an offline print job that works in the background and prints an
xml in a drop-folder;
2. Create a custom doc library event handler for SharePoint that would do
the conversion when new forms are filled out and saved to the library;
I'm sure there is a better way, but I just can't think of one off the top of
my head... particularly as you want a background process.
Gavin.