Nestlé, the food company, has brought out an application for the iPhone and iPad targeted at the financial community.
The app is a stripped-down version of the Nestlé corporate website and features four home page sections: news and features, press releases, PDF presentations and a weekly update on the company’s share buy-back program.
There is also a reports section, where users can download PDFs of the annual report, half-yearly report and financial statements.
The app was released on October 22 to coincide with the company’s third-quarter results. Initial feedback from investors and third-party application analysts has been positive, according to Roddy Child-Villiers, Nestlé’s head of IR.
‘People – particularly those on the sell side who do a lot of traveling – say they spend a lot of time on airplanes reading documents. The app means they can download and read them on the plane without lugging documents around,’ says Child-Villiers.
Within a week, the app had clocked up 450 downloads. ‘When you think of who we are targeting, that’s a pretty good number, Child-Villiers adds.’ The number of downloads currently stands at roughly 1,000.
‘Nestlé’s is not the first company app by a long chalk, but it is pioneering in its clear intention to rival a more conventional mobile corporate site. And it is impressively executed,’ writes web consultancy Bowen Craggs in a review of the app.
Bowen Craggs notes that the success of Nestlé’s app will come down, in part, to the adoption of the iPad as a business tool, which allows for easier reading of PDF documents.
The idea for the app was devised by Child-Villiers, a keen iPad user. Earlier this year, he bought an iPad and quickly discovered its usefulness for business purposes.
‘Now all of my team – of whom there are four – have iPads,’ he tells IR magazine. ‘The iPad has turned out to be fantastic for all the data we carry around; all our presentations now sit on the iPad rather than in a big file.’
Child-Villiers was also encouraged to pursue his idea by the way members of the investment community had already started using the iPad. ‘I was going to meetings and investors were showing up with iPads,’ he explains.
The app will be updated to include press clippings. ‘When there are interesting things on Nestlé or our industry, we’ll put them on the website and on the app,’ says Child-Villiers. ‘That wasn’t ready for the first launch but it will follow.’
The app is available to download by going to Apple’s app store and searching for ‘Nestlé’. For non-Apple users, an Android version is set to follow.
