Why did you make an app?

We converted commercial pamphlet issued three times a year into an app. 
You can distribute the latest information with the app. 
???

At our company, when new PC products are released three times a year, about 200 of our sales staff nationwide are introduced to the new products and trained to sell them to the sales staff of home electronics mass retailers. As a training tool, we used to create a booklet (sales advice book) for product introduction with about 60 pages.

It is necessary to recreate the booklet every time a new product is released three times a year and deliver it nationwide, and in the personal computer industry, the speed of the industry itself is fast and the product specifications are sometimes changed just before the release in accordance with the announcement of other companies' products. 

Therefore, I felt that it was difficult to convey the "latest information" of the product on paper media. When I thought about how to convey the latest information about our company other than paper media, I came up with the idea that the smartphone app would be the best choice.

Impact

Successful cost and workload reduction through the app
???

We published about 12,000 copies of the booklet at a time, but it took up a lot of space to store it, and it was sometimes wasted after the distribution period. Also, since it's paper, the content cannot be modified after it is published. To solve such a problem, I decided to make a smartphone app.

First of all, what I felt after introducing it was that the distribution method was easy. Since you only need to install the app on your smartphone, it does not take time and money to store and ship like a booklet, and there is no shortage. The content of the app can be easily updated from the management screen, so even if you replace it immediately before, you can make the change on the spot.

In the case of the previous booklet, it took 1.5 to 2 months to produce and proofread, but with the app, it has been reduced to 1 week. We were able to reduce production costs by more than 4 million yen annually. Other companies in the same industry have begun trying to digitize new product introduction booklets as well just like our company, but they are only distributing them in PDF. The apps we provide have received positive feedback from retailers as being easy to use.

We are also now able to convey things that we couldn't communicate before with the paper media using videos through the YouTube link function. 

Why Yappli?

You can update iOS and Android all at once 
on one management screen.
It can also handle urgent revisions. 

After deciding to make an app, I consulted with multiple companies, but they did not meet the criteria we were looking for. Meanwhile, when I found out about the "Yappli" service by searching on the Internet and spoke to them, it seemed that Yappli would meet our needs, so I started considering it seriously.

Before deciding with Yappli, they also created a sample app that actually worked based on our sales advice book, so internal consideration and approval proceeded very smoothly. Of course, the purpose of making an app was to reduce costs, so it was also attractive that both the initial development cost and the monthly cost were low.

In addition, it was helpful to have a unique solution to simplify the distribution method and to provide a mechanism to download both iOS and Android from one QR code.

After the introduction, I received a lecture on how to use the management screen, so I am free to create content with simple update work. It is also good that you can update both iOS / Android contents at once on one management screen. Push notifications are also easy to use.

What's next?

To an even easier-to-use app.
Propose new PC 
usage through the app.

The number of major home electronics mass retailers nationwide that handle our products is approximately 1,500 to 2,000, and our app is currently being used with over 2,000 downloads. In the case of apps, I feel that it is easier to manage because it allows me to grasp the number of downloads compared to paper booklets.

In the future, we would like to make it even easier to use and improve convenience. I want to aim for about 5,000 downloads. We would like to make new efforts such as proposing new ways to use PCs by serving customers using smartphones.