Launching FatStax for iPad

Today is the culmination of about 4 months worth of work for us at Red Funnel. We launched a new iPad app for sales productivity called FatStax. It got approved last night and is sitting on the App Store. We are excited and think it can make a real difference for many sales teams.

Briefly, we created a service that puts company product information easily and quickly onto the iPad so that sales forces can find their products at a tap and then send product details to the buyer, without having to use the website or carry a laptop. There are full details at our new website, www.FatStax.com.

Why?

Frankly, we saw a need and an opportunity for us to create a product that would be useful to a lot of sales forces. When you have selling responsibility for lots of products, it’s not easy to keep track of what’s new, changed, or frankly, everything that is in your catalog. We see examples of potential buyers asking reps in this industry if they have a specific product and then the mad scramble to find it before they leave begins. Sales reps should have that information at their fingertips. At least that’s what we think.

As we talk to our friends and family about what we are doing, they constantly come up with new industries where FatStax can be useful. Even though we started in life sciences, we are learning about other markets where sales people need to have a better way of finding their own products and sending the information immediately to buyers.

Breakout

We’ve been pretty quiet about the project online primarily because we wanted to be sure it worked well (it does). But we have been sharing the app with individual reps for weeks. We have several beta testers that have been using it with some terrific feedback and ideas that made the final product even better.

The whole process of developing a business app for a relatively new mobile device has been rewarding and frustrating at the same time. We plan to write about our experiences in the coming weeks. We are keeping a running list of what we would do again and what we would try not to repeat.

What’s Next?

We enjoy working with clients on their business issues and particularly on their websites. We don’t intend to stop doing that. There is a huge sense of satisfaction when you contribute in helping another business succeed. We intend on continuing to write about issues in the life sciences market place, largely due to all the great feedback we have received.

We also think that mobile devices will radically change the way business and sales works. Having the most relevant information at your fingertips, in front of customers, has the potential for vastly increasing productivity and the value of a sales force. We have a passion for that and want to be a part of that change. Look for us to write about our experiences and thoughts about this industry, too.

If you have an iPad, download FatStax for free and use it with the sample database we included. Let us know what you think here or on the comments section on iTunes.

Mark Walker

Mark has over 20 years sales, marketing, and consulting experience in the life science marketplace with Invitrogen, Eli Lilly, and G&S Research. He created and launched NaviGRANT, a popular online database service that enables sales and marketing to mine life science grant information. Mark writes about sales and online marketing practices that apply to the life science space and how information is the new digital currency. He resides in Indianapolis, Indiana, fully experiencing all four seasons of the year. Contact Mark at mark.redfunnel@gmail.com or http://twitter.com/LifeSciBiz

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