Appnetic, a platform for creating native sales apps in iOS, launched in beta yesterday. The app, which is free while it is in beta, lets non-coders create a mobile app to help salespeople access documents and videos in the field.
Parent company Tech2000 built the first generation of Appnetic for the sales team of a Fortune 20 telecom company, which wanted to cut the time it took to prep for sales calls.
"Then, a Fortune 10 tech company had a similar problem," says CEO Tien Wong. "They weren't selling enough. We cut the training time. We put the case studies and videos…everything nice and neat on the iPad. Non-programmers can create a custom, native app on iOS in 15 minutes. They can load content, distribute it to their sales teams, customers and employees." Since the platform is cloud-based, content stays current and everyone stays on the same page.
William Smith, VP of product and growth for Appnetic, explains that the platform is "different from [competitor] Salesforce because it is much simpler. Salesforce is very complicated. Each person has to set up their own version." Smith does say that Appnetic plans to integrate with Salesforce's API sometime in the future.
Wong says that the full version will have a multi-tiered price structure, which is still being worked out. "The base price will be free or close to free," he says. "The middle will be priced in a way that the user will have tremendous ROI." And the top? "Integration with Salesforce and lots of features. We're in the research stage in terms of price. We're getting feedback from our customers."
Appnetic currently has 15 people working on the project (some part-time). An Android version of the mobile app is scheduled for an end of August release, with a possible full version coming sometime in September.
This article has been updated to clarify the number of people working on Appnetic.