Developing Tools for Success

As one of our first clients, Red Funnel Consulting has worked with Connect Think’s team of experienced developers to successfully build and modify, FatStax, an internal sales application for the sales rep on the go. The custom-branded mobile sales app, created to allow sales representatives to share product information throughout the sales process, was available only on a single platform: iPad. Most recently, with Connect Think’s guidance, Red Funnel Consulting decided to make the leap to iPhone! We’re excited to have developed the FatStax iPhone app to provide a new opportunity to deliver FatStax sales data to reach a larger audience.

Last year, we consulted with our client to determine the right method to get their product to a new mobile platform. Our developers, having built the iPad app, were excited to delve into this new customization. For this project, we worked closely with our client to make sure the restructured layout of the app on a smaller screen wouldn’t negatively affect the user experience. Developing an app from iPad to iPhone offers many challenges, but only a few involve actual changes in app logic. The biggest impact of moving to a new device is accommodating the smaller screen size, cellular connectivity, and battery power. This results in the majority of code changes focusing around user experience and user interface design. All of the technical environment effects of the new platform play a role in the usability of the app.

FatStax iPad app was developed before Apple’s introduction of Auto Layout. For the iPhone, our development team decided to take advantage of this new technical offering to better fit Apple’s new best practice standard. Converting to Auto Layout provided an optimized version for each the iPhone’s different screen sizes and an enhanced user experience. In addition to Auto Layout conversion, our development team modified the media sync engine to use less battery and network bandwidth, added an optimized view of product and resource “cards” to quickly access summarized product and resource information, and increased internal system share sheet support. In developing the iPhone app, we allow the device’s unique usability constraints to drive the feature set as opposed to focusing on porting over the iPad features on a one-to-one basis.

It is exciting to share in the success of our clients and their efforts to help their sales professionals succeed.

Connect Think welcomes partners looking to help their employees succeed through utilization of customized technology tools. Contact us today for more information on how we can help you build a more successful business!

For more information and to download the FatStax iPhone app, click the Apple app badge below.