Ipad 3 Small Business Review & Usability Study

Technology is at the core of the success of the Better Life Maids green cleaning franchise. We have certainly embraced technology in our business. We have developed a one of a kind online cloud based scheduling system, deployed IPhones to all of our teams, utilize a company developed IPhone checklist to ensure quality on each visit, eliminated paper scheduling with the IPhone tools mentioned above and much more.

For a traditionally low tech business, we love bright shiny tech objects, especially if they make our lives BETTER and of course help improve our bottom line. When the first Ipad came out we considered using it instead of the IPhones for our teams. The main limitation was the lack of camera, and the ability to make phone calls from the original Ipad. That changed with the Ipad 2 and was further refined with the newest Ipad released on March 16th.

I decided I “needed” this newest Ipad. I want to share with you my initial impressions of the device, and its potential to be a great mobile platform for business professionals. While I don’t think it is quite ready to replace the desktop or laptop completely, it is getting pretty close. I am going to highlight a couple of the features that made me desire to upgrade from the original Ipad.

Screen

First of all, I read a lot. And one of the first things that appealed to me was the high resolution screen of the newest IPad. In fact, I can not with the naked eye make out individual pixels. I placed a small drop of water on the screen and it magnified the pixels enough that I could make them out, but it is a vast improvement over the original Ipad I own. Reading on it is much easier on the eye and I can tell you, that it is the crispest and best screen of all of the technology devices I own.

Camera

The original Ipad was missing a camera, and I think it was an oversight in the design not to include it. The Ipad 2 rectified this with a VGA quality front facing camera, and a fairly low res rear camera. The front facing camera is the same on this generation of the Ipad, but the rear cameral is 5 MP now and takes fairly good photos. While I can’t see myself using this camera for much, an Ipad in the hands of a field service tech would find lots of uses for this camera. The difference between the Ipad 2 & 3’s camera’s is significant, but if I had opted to purchase the Ipad 2, I don’t think this feature would have been enough to sway me to upgrade.

4G + LTE

This is a pretty big deal. The speeds while surfing the internet on the 4G Verizon network are similar if not slightly better than what I experience at my office, and much improved over the 3G ATT on my original Ipad. If you are a mobile professional and spend a great deal of time at airports or other public places with spotty Wifi coverage, than you will definitely want to opt of this feature. Also with Verizon’s LTE network you can share your LTE connection and use your IPad as a hotspot for no additional charges. I only plan on using the 1GB plan to supplement Wifi, for $20 a month as I am not travelling as much as a I used to. Choosing between ATT & Verizon here is a personal choice. AT&T in general has a very well built HSPA+ network that AT&T is calling 4g and is certainly much faster than 3G, their LTE network coverage is not as built out as Verizon at this time. I chose Verizon even though all of my phones are currently on AT&T’s network, again mostly because AT&T does not have LTE network built out in the St. Louis market, and does not have a definitive roll out date. They have indicated late spring early summer 2012, but again have not committed to a definitive date.

Business & Personal Apps

Nothing new here over previous generations, I simply want to point out some great apps that I use to make the Ipad a useful business tool. I will say the apps tend to run smoother and with much less lag and hang than my first generation Ipad. The improved processor and increased ram seem to make the whole system run incredibly smooth. Some of my favorite apps on the new Ipad include:

Ignition: This is a remote desktop app from Logmein. It is a great app that allows you to access multiple PC’s or Macs. You can easily transfer files between computers, and cloud systems such as Dropbox or other popular cloud programs, print, watch videos, listen to music, and in general perform most popular remote desktop functions for a one time cost, versus a monthly subscription.

Ringcentral: This is the cloud based phone system that I use to manage my companies phone system. You can view messages and faxes from this program as well as make outbound calls using your business line. Your clients will see your companies number on their caller ID versus your private mobile number. The call quality is very good, and you aren’t using your mobile minutes, but if you are off Wifi, you are eating in to your data plan.

Dropbox: What a great program. You can get up to 2 GB of free storage, or purchase up to 100 GB or more. In combination with some other applications, I currently just use the free 2 GB of storage, but will probably look at expanding to the 50 GB for $99 per year and further unify my digital information. I have all of my business files, business photography, contracts, and more stored securely. It works seamlessly between devices and keeps your files synced up perfectly. I highly recommend getting a Dropbox account and trying it out if you haven’t looked it over yet. Here is a link to get started with Dropbox today http://db.tt/0ZH89YOl.

Square: This app is a great tool for a mobile service business. Square is a mobile payment processing system that is quick and easy to set up and makes taking credit cards easy for small businesses. On the IPhone it is great. On the Ipad it is amazing. In fact is is a full service Point of Sale (POS) system that tracks all the items you put into it, and can integrate with other devices to create a full featured business sales system. You can dig into the information with detailed reports so you can see what is selling well, what is not, and where adjustments can be made. I plan on using this app at many of the festivals and events we attend. We can sell products and track sales right from the app. Eventually if we deploy this app to field techs, the POS system will make it easier for our teams to collect payments at the time of service, and choose the right charges and even include add ons like products and more.

Itunes Match: This is not so much an app, as a feature that you purchase and turn on in your Apple ecosystem. Again this feature works with the older iDevices as well, so is nothing brand new, but is a great feature to enable and makes your new Ipad so much more useful. For $25 a year, you can match all of your current music library with Itunes (up to 25,000 songs which is equivalent to nearly 150 GB of music). Once it is set up, all of your music is available on your Ipad, Iphone, etc… and you can set up a master ICloud account that allows you to share the library among a whole family. I have nearly 27 GB of music, just under 6,000 songs and the system matched nearly 4,800 seamlessly, and the rest I uploaded into the system. Just a back up to your music library for $25 a year is very reasonable and is worth the investment.

ICloud: Makes baking up your information on your Ipad, IPhone, and other devices seamless. I particularly like the photo stream feature between devices. I am not sure I will upgrade beyond the free 5 GB that I use to back up my devices, but it is extremely useful for many things. I will probably purchase my additional storage through dropbox as it seems to be a better system for organizing how I use picture, documents, and more.

Overall I am very excited about the IPad 3. I can envision it being a very important tool in our franchise system. Perhaps one day, we can give each new franchisee an Ipad when they come to St. Louis for their training. It would have all of the manuals converted to IBooks with relevant multi-media embedded right in the training materials. Our teams will use the Ipad for day to day operations. With the 4G radio, using the IPad for maps during the day will be smooth and seamless. Work orders will be easier to read than on the Iphone and easier to update, and much more. In fact in the long run, It will end up being less expensive to operate Ipads as we can get on a $20 prepaid service plan of 1 GB of data, and drop the voice services from the plans, and use Ringcentral to call clients to let them know we are on the way, and communicate with the office. This potentially could save as much as $500 per device per year.

I am sure I will find lots of new uses for this bright shiny tech object. Do you plan to get a new Ipad 3 or even an Ipad 2 now that the price has dropped? Do you see some specific business purpose for the new Ipad and your business? Let us know and join the conversation.