The app needed to provide a record look-up facility, either using the customer's name or the site they work at, as well as allowing the sales team to update key contact data for each customer.

Additionally, the app needed to manage the sales team's appointments with customers and give pop-up scheduled calendar alerts when a meeting was due or needed to be arranged.

When a sales team member was with a customer, they needed to be prompted with a list of questions to ask to help maintain all relevant data in Roche's CRM system.

Sales staff also wanted to record the quantity, age and type of scientific instruments each customer was using, so they could monitor 'hot prospects' and be alerted when anything was due for replacement.

Having met with the project's stakeholders at Roche, we talked about their business goals and processes and how the iPad app could best equip their sales team to work in a more streamlined manner.

We built Roche's sales team a custom iPad app, from designs by Fruit Design, which allows reps to regularly download the latest contact data and upcoming appointments from Roche's CRM system, and have these delivered directly into their app.

Sales staff can see, add and update their customers' contact details, job roles and place of work, monitor the inventory of Roche-provided instruments they have been sold and look for opportunities to increase sales of 'reagents' (consumables) to existing customers. The app records this customer data over time and summarises it clearly via a dashboard within the app.

Additionally, we delivered a simplified, locked-down customer-facing version of the iPad app that runs in 'Kiosk mode', so that when sales staff are with clients or at exhibitions, prospects or customers can enter their own data, or sign up for services, from the app.

Alongside Fruit Design, we designed the app to be able to communicate with Roche's CRM directly, at the instigation of the sales staff.

Throughout the week as the sales team meet customers, they use the app to log and update customer contact data and make notes on the outcome of their meeting.

The app adds to, modifies and regenerates customer data until the sales team member is ready to upload his or her data back to the CRM at the end of the week. Once the sync to the CRM is initiated at the end of the week, the sales team member is locked out from making further edits within the app or the CRM, so that the risk of data duplication is diminished.

Our sync process performs the tasks of matching contact data from the app with existing CRM records or creating new records for new customers. Once the app's data has synced with the CRM, the rep is able to download the next week's data and begin the process again.