Apps by UK law, accountancy and property firms – Are we missing the mobile revolution? Kim Tasso RedStarKim Limited www.kimtasso.com 1st June 2012 A short paper providing an introduction to Apps from the legal, accountancy and property sectors in the UK and some guidance for those who are starting to think about developing their own App
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Apps by UK law, accountancy and property firms – Are we ...€¦ · Apps by UK law, accountancy and property firms – Are we missing the mobile revolution? K i m T a s s o R e
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Apps by UK law, accountancy and property firms – Are we missing the mobile revolution?
KPMG has a similar offering although it offers some slightly different Apps. It has trademarked
its KPMG VAT Quest (an interactive training game with great graphics) and KPMG Go is
about developing your personal brand and transitioning from school to the professional world.
For Grant Thornton I could find only simple Apps for non-UK territories.
Professional institutions I had thought that the professional bodies would lead the way – especially the RICS (Royal Institution
of Chartered Surveyors) as its global brand is so strong and its marketing is highly acclaimed – but I
couldn’t find one (although the Society of Chartered Surveyors in Ireland has Rebuilding Cost Guide).
There is a RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Journal iPad App – I expected this to only be
available to those who subscribe to the magazine but it allows you to download a sample edition in
exchange for an email address – that’s smart marketing and good lead generation.
The only Law Society App appears to be that of South Australia which looks like a basic directory.
The ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) has the Financial Reporting
Faculty. The ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has various Apps (produced with
Chartered Education) to support those studying for its examinations.
Current App categories The success of legal, accountancy and surveying driven Apps may be thwarted by the categories that
are used by App sales platforms such as iTunes. For example, the most likely categories on iTunes
are reference, business, finance and lifestyle.
The Sunday Times Apps list is a little more helpful – with a section on legal Apps although it has a
consumer focus as you would expect. Currently there are only four Apps listed here:
Which? Your Rights A pocket-sized legal guide FREE
SpeedUp Conveyancing Keep track of the house-buying process £1.19
Divorce UK Helpful, jargon-free legal guidance FREE (see above)
AutoWill A DIY will kit for your iPhone £4.99
Types of professional firm Apps Looking at all the apps I have found in my searching, it was relatively easy to start categorising them
into types:
Directory – Listing organisations and/or people
Information/reference – Glossaries, processes and explanations of situations. The legal and tax rate Apps are mostly in this area.
Calculator – Entering values and having various tax rates or statutory rules applied to calculate rates, liabilities or due dates.
Form filling – Either to automate a process where you usually seek advice from a professional that then does the job or is sent to a professional for consideration or to capture information about a particular situation (e.g. a car accident) where the information is effectively generating a lead or enquiry for a firm.
Diagnostic – Some of the form filling Apps have progressed into diagnostic aids that then present the information required without too much further effort from the user
Database search – Typically for the property where GPS is harnessed
Integrated – Few are integrated with an online application to provide, for instance, details of an existing matter or case, the ability to link to the relevant people in your professional team or information on work in progress or billing. But I suspect that these Apps exist but are not available for public inspection. These would, of course, be the most valuable to professional firms as they would effectively offer something different to clients, become a vital day-to-day tool and “lock in” the clients to the firm.
The following diagram summarises the current range of functionality:
Professional firm App grading When web sites started appearing, there were numerous analyses of the quality of those web sites
with various criteria for assessing their relative strengths and weaknesses. I have not finalised a
grading system for Apps but I currently take into account the following factors:
Information content
Information presentation (including multimedia)
Ease of use
Interaction/User experience
Processing capability
Novelty
Professionalism
Fit with organisation’s strategy and brand
No doubt other criteria will emerge as the technology develops and the market matures. It feels like
the exercise I did when professional firms started using web sites – progress was slow and shaky to
start and then accelerated.
Potential for other professional service firm Apps Other sectors seem pretty switched on with Apps – for example, many major trade events have their
own Apps to support delegates navigate conference programmes, exhibitors, personal itineraries and
(e.g. relevant defamation, privacy and intellectual property law) and help on what to do in emergency
situations.
Pre-nuptial Preparation – This App could provide a prompt and aide-memoire to those considering
marriage. It could tailor advice depending on the age, assets and dependents of the couple (whether
straight or gay) and provide prompted lists of issues to consider in advance of marriage. The App
might also provide help for managing such delicate discussions and noting particular issues for the
couple.
Family and child contact – Research shows that too often, the non resident parent loses contact
with the children as the resident parent is antagonistic or refuses to adhere to Court directions. In
these circumstances, the non resident parent is directed to keep a log of all incidents, texts and
emails. An App that provides a diary to monitor child contact arrangements or the behaviour of an
errant spouse or former spouse would be valuable.
Criminal law – An App could provide a facility for keeping track of and organising abusive texts, calls,
emails, videos, social media posts etc as evidence for a stalking or family case.
Property Proximity warnings - The GPS facilities on phones must mean that there are a lot of potential Apps for the property sector. Imagine being able to have proximity alerts when you approach a location, development or building that meets your pre-set criteria or those of items in your current portfolio. Property terriers – These systems are usually available to clients online but elements could be
available on an App to help staff working in the field. Naturally, these would need connections to
traditional proprietary database systems.
Property buyer or landlord coach – An App could provide help, guidance and examples of what to
look for or at when inspecting a property that a person or organisation intends to rent or buy. It might
also allow photographs and videos to be taken and annotated for closer inspection by a property
professional.
Property investment guide - An App could be loaded with details of your property portfolio and
provided with a yields calculator and monitor as well as integrated look up tables to the latest IPD
database so that performance comparisons could be easily made on the move.
Architects plans – An App for those having a new home built and/or major refurbishments or
extensions. It could include links to notes on proposed materials and costs and allow a “what if?”
analysis to change certain parameters. There could be links to planning and building regulations as
well as the ability to interrogate the plans and see them from different perspectives. Augmented reality
might enable users to see how the proposed development might look against the current building.
Area guides – Most people seek information from agents relating to the local area - schools, safety,
parking, local rates, restaurants etc. It would be relatively easy to develop an App that links into the
wealth of information publically available from numerous sources and for agents to regularly provide
additional insights over time to provide a unique reference guide. The App could be extended into a
community tool allowing a variety of people and organisations to provide additional content.
Accountancy Management information – It must be possible to upload key information from annual reports and
accounts and apply tools within the App to interrogate them and produce exception and comparison
reports, charts and presentations. Or the ability to drill down into key parts of the reports and see the
Apps that use the controls on the device like camera or accelerometer and improve or manipulate – current favourites are Planets and QR scanners and the Torch that uses the light from the camera
Bespoke Apps that take into consideration some or all of the above even the use of GPS
Planning and design It is interesting to look at the Apps’ purpose from a business perspective - what is the ultimate benefit,
return on investment and value once it is completed and shared amongst the population. Assuming all
these green lights are on, it sounds obvious - but this is where you must plan and plan and plan
again.
Work out the paths and routes throughout the App. Think of the user experience (UX) and don't get
hung up on the technology at this stage. The idea is to make this experience bullet proof and the user
must understand exactly what to do and not get lost or break the workflow.
There needs to be decisions about what functionality of the device will be used for example: touch
screen, track pad, front and back cameras, accelerometer, GPS and location tracking,
personalisation, pushing and pulling content. There also needs to be thought into how the App is to be
delivered and what security might be needed for data stored or transferred and any user information.
Depending on the scale of the App the above stages can take anywhere from two weeks to three
months (insert the piece of string analogy here!) to get a decent set of parameters before you can
think of getting it costed for development, and at professional agency rates averaging about
£700/$1150 per day you need to be very confident and prepared.
A lot of complex enterprise Apps get start up funding by what we call a JAD or joint application
development. Where the client agrees to pays for a 'scope' . This is a wise move for a comparatively
smaller amount of money to see if your concept has legs.
The output is a detailed document that professionally maps out the project and includes all skills sets
and effort expressed in man days. These more intense and heavy JAD can be expected at a
minimum of 10 days agency work for at least three people (ux designer, technical architect and a
strategic consultant). Don't forget that you will also need to commit to time here too as it is a joint
effort.
Build In the main, most enterprise Apps will be created targeting a single phone type and screen size
(usually defined by user groups and target market i.e. what is the main phone used by the target
users). This is a starting point for building using MVC design pattern (Model-View-Controller - a
technique of building that makes porting to different target phones easier as each layer is independent
of each other).
This is the most efficient way to attack the multiple phone problem and will cut port and rebuild costs
down to about 40-55% of the original project per phone platform (it’s still not cheap but cheaper than
rebuilding from scratch each time).
Once the creative and build process begins every screen that is to be made needs to be documented
and templates created in what at Fresh01 is called a guard book. All instructions that relate to MVC
are created and annotated so that no stone is unturned. How the screens behave on different phone
In case you are unfamiliar with mobile web design this short explanation is for you!
As so many people access the Internet via their smartphone, you need to ensure that there is a
mobile version of your web site. Yet you need to ensure that it works on Blackberries, iPhones, iPads,
netbooks and Kindles. You also need to accommodate all screen resolutions (and whether portrait or
landscape) – and goodness knows what other imminent new inventions.
Some believe that the answer is something called Responsive Web Design (RWD) that suggests that
design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen
size, platform and orientation.
The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and CSS (Cascading Style
Sheets). This means that the website has the technology to automatically respond to the user’s
preferences and eliminates the need for a different design and development phase for each new
gadget on the market.
Of course, for an m.web to work the device must be connected to the Internet whereas an App can
work without a connection. I’m not going to enter into the debate here about speed and the user
experience and whether a good mobile web site makes an App redundant!
Appendix - Additional research information Much of the research available tends to focus on what users want from general Apps – particularly consumer and retail applications. There’s hardly any research on what businesses might want from advisory or professional service Apps. What users want from mobile (Compuware Report) A 2011 survey of 4,014 global mobile web users
found that consumers have high expectations for mobile website and application performance.
Ultimately, 71% stated they expect websites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their
mobile phone compared to the computer they use at home – up from 58% in 2009. The survey “What
Users Want From Mobile” also revealed how unsatisfactory mobile web and application experiences
can negatively shape a consumer’s opinion of an organization.
Mobile Websites and Apps Optimization Best Practice Guide (Craig Sullivan, Econsultancy,
January 2012 - £250) Covers seven rules including: Know Thy Device, Get Good Mobile Analytics,
Hunt Opportunity, Not Myths, Kill Your Own Myths, End Device Discrimination Today, Mobile
Performance is Vital and It’s About the Audience, not the Religion.
App stats It’s hard to get to the reliable statistics on Apps. But this is a helpful resource:
http://www.weareapps.com/app_facts.html Some key facts stated:
6 billion iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) Apps are expected to be downloaded during 2012 and 8 billion Android apps. Source Ovum
98% of iPhone users use the data features of their phone, 88% use their iPhone to surf the internet and 75% download Apps. Source: The Neilson Company
In April 2011, the most popular App by usage in the UK was Google's Maps, followed by Yahoo Weather, Facebook, Google Mobile and YouTube. Source, GSMA and Comscore
Free Apps that break the top 50 are generally downloaded over 10,000 times daily. Source: AdMob
Mobile Analytics firm Flurry suggests an App ranked in the top five is downloaded more than 50,000 times a day. Source: imediaconnection.com.
The following site also provides statistics on the android market http://www.appbrain.com/stats/
But the main site for reliable information is at TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/mobile/ and an older blog post provides some insight into the revenue potential for Apps http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/16/iphone-app-sales-exposed/ App market http://appmuse.com/appmusing/how-big-is-the-app-market/ provides the following information: World Mobile Applications Market reported in January 2011 that the mobile App market will grow from $6.8 billion in 2011 to $25 billion over the next four years. That same month, Gizmag.com reported that Gartner estimated 2013 App revenue at $29.5 billion. A month earlier, IDC estimated $35 billion in worldwide App revenue by 2014. Mobile marketing guidance The Chartered Institute of Marketing has a number of papers, books and courses relating to the broad topic of mobile marketing - www.cim.co.uk. There is also the Mobile Marketing Association http://www.mmaglobal.com/marketdata Mobile technology The following references are for those interested in mobile web site technology issues http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/12/guidelines-for-responsive-web-design/ and http://thinkvitamin.com/design/responsive-design-image-gotcha/) Technology trends Each of the national newspapers has a technology section where the latest developments in the App market are shown. For example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology