Wipro, fourth largest IT services exporter, has signed an agreement to buy Australia's Promax Applications Group for AUD35 million (approximately Rs 190 crore).Wipro's announcement that it has acquired Australian analytics company Promax Applications Group in an all cash deal paying 2.3 times its revenues, comes as no surprise. Wipro already gets about $600 million from the analytics business which is approximately 10 per cent of its overall revenues from the IT business and employs around 8000 people in this practice and in the past has been one of the most aggressive M & A player amongst Tier I companies. In the past it has famously under its 'string of pearls' been agressive in acquiring companies some of which like the NerveWire acquisition has not been very successful, whereas some of the others including its Spectramind acquisition has helped leapfrog growth.IT Companies are looking to value add for clients struggling in a slow growth environment. Analytics help in mining data collected by the clients, analysing and help them serve their customers better. Cognizant for instance, bought MarketRx and Core Logic mainly for their analytics practice. Rishad Premji, the M&A head of Wipro, said that the company is focused on 3 areas in its acquisition strategy: Addressing domain gaps, identifying opportunities in analytics, enterprise mobility and platform based solutions in cloud, as well as geographical expansion in markets like France and Germany. Wipro said it would take Promax's productized service beyond the existing base in industries like food and beverage, pharma as well as technology and cross sell to other existing client base. Promax has 70 employees who will be absorbed into Wipro.Avendus Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor.Soaps to software conglomerate Wipro Ltd, last week announced its results for the financial year 2011-12, wherein it declared revenues of $7.37 billion (of which IT services revenue alone were $5.92 billion) and a net income of $1.1 billion. Wipro does not provide guidance for the full year but said it expects revenues to be flat in the IT services business in the first quarter between $1.52 bn to $1.55 billion. The company made the announcement after Wipro shares had closed the day down 0.41 per cent to close at Rs 405.1, on a day when the Sensex was in the green up 0.76 per cent to end the day at 17318.8 points and when the IT index had also closed the day in positive territory by 2.37 per cent.
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It is a marriage of two companies with their business roots firmly entrenched in Kolkata. The $4-billion Aditya Bitla Nuvo has acquired a part of Pantaloon Retail India Limited's lifestyle business called ‘Pantaloon'. Eighty-six such stores will now form part of a new entity, controlled by Aditya Birla Nuvo (ABN), which will be automatically listed on the BSE and the NSE. A source from the Future Group added that ABN has for the moment acquired a minority stake by infusing Rs 800 crore through debentures, which will be converted to equity when the new entity is formed, where ABN will have a majority stake of 50.1 per cent. ABN will have the majority stake only after it makes an open offer to the shareholders of Pantaloon Retail India Ltd (PRIL). ABN will also infuse another Rs 800 crore to service the debt of Pantaloon. Both groups which are being advised by JM Financial are yet to decide the swap ratio that will determine the shareholding in the new entity. The word on the street is that PRIL will own 25 per cent in the new entity and will manage the operations of the 86 stores whose turnover is expected to touch Rs 1,700 crore this financial year ending June 2012. More importantly it means that Rs 1,600 crore of debt will be wiped out from the balance sheet of PRIL, which has a debt of Rs 5,256 crore. "This is the first of the many steps to wipe off the debt in the Future Group," says Devengashu Dutta, CEO of Third Eyesight.According to SMC research the retail industry gathered new momentum during the year 2011. Different international brands were established. New shopping malls and department stores were seen sprouting across the country. In terms of growth, the organised retail segment in India is projected to be 9 per cent of total retail market by 2015 and 20 per cent by 2020. ABN's business generates $ 4 billion in revenues, but its lifestyle business generates only $400 million in revenues.Madura Fashion and Lifestyle is the largest premium branded apparel player in India. Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Peter England are the brands retailed through 1,082 exclusive brand outlets spanning across 1.6 million square feet of retail space. These brands are also retailed in more than 1,250 departmental stores and multi brand outlets. It has a strategic distributorship tie-up with leading brand Esprit and retails international brands under ‘The Collective', a luxury store. But the day-to-day management of the new entity will be run by Pantaloon's management team. Rakesh Biyani and Kailash Bhatia will continue to manage the business and a "Fashion Council" which will have the best talent from Madura Garments and Future Group will aid and advise the management with the objective to fully leverage the strengths of Madura Garments and Pantaloon.This buyout will allow ABN to access markets where it was previously absent. Pantaloon is well suited for tier II and III towns. "The exponential growth experienced by retail sector is not just limited to the major cities," says D K Aggarwal, MD of SMC Investments in Mumbai. He adds that the growing population and urbanization provides a huge market for organized retail. But why sell stake in a venture that was highly profitable for the Future Group and which had the highest concentration of private label in the business? "The rising debt levels of Pantaloon have been impacting the growth of the Group," says Aggarwal of SMC. He adds that they have been paying about 60 per cent of their revenues as interest cost. This move is a bit surprising because the company had indicated rationalizing its non-core business and other JVs. But Pantaloon, due to its cash crunch was not able to grow its topline. This shows that Kishore Biyani, the MD of PRIL, had to sell one of his jewels which he essentially nurtured since 1997.But some analysts call this a clever move by Mr Retail because retaining management control of the new entity will allow Kishore to continue his quest to win the Indian shopper. And this time with the help of the $35 billion Aditya Birla Group he can keep his story of making history in the Indian retail market intact.
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Small and medium businesses are the backbone of India. But how prepared are they to deal with disasters? Not very, as the India findings of the 2012 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey by Symantec Corp show. The survey, gathered from 100 Indian SMBs with less than 249 employees, reveals that more than 90 per cent of Indian SMBs are not sufficiently prepared even as they grapple with high instances of disasters. On the positive side, it seems Indian SMBs are adopting technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing and mobility, often with improved disaster preparedness as a goal. Highlighting the importance of embracing innovation to better respond to challenges, Vijay Mhaskar, vice president, Information Management Group, Symantec India, says "small and medium businesses cannot afford lengthy downtimes and so their ability to quickly recover from a disaster is critical." "It's time Indian SMBs start looking seriously at having a sound plan with effective security and data protection solutions that will enable them to better prepare for and quickly recover from potential disasters."The India Survey revealed SMBs face the following scenarioLong Duration Outages: The survey reveals that Indian SMBs experienced at least one natural disaster in the last 12 months. Power outage (74 percent) and industrial accidents (72 percent) are the top disasters cited. Indian SMBs also experienced an average of five instances of operational outage, due to power outages, industrial accidents and IT system failures, lasting an average of 11 hours. Indian SMBs underprepared for disaster: Pointing to the poor levels of disaster preparedness, the survey findings reveal that of the respondents, only six pe rcent of Indian SMBs said that they are "extremely prepared" for disaster; eight per cent replied that they "have a disaster recovery plan"; and one third of the respondents said that they "have an offsite failover". The reasons for not having a disaster recovery plan range from lack of resources (42 per cent), computer systems not critical to business (37 per cent), budgets (21 per cent) and business priority (16 per cent). Showing complete unawareness for the need of disaster preparedness, a sizeable number of respondents (21 per cent) said that it never occurred to them to have a disaster recovery plan. Effect of disaster preparedness being considered by Indian SMBs while adopting emerging technologies: In many cases, a desire to improve their disaster preparedness played a part in adopting emerging technologies like virtualization, cloud and mobility. Fifty-six percent of respondents were influenced to undertake server virtualization to improve disaster preparedness. In the case of private cloud computing, 62 percent reported that disaster preparedness influenced their decision, similar to the 63 percent who said it affected their commitment to public cloud adoption. This held true with mobility as well, with disaster preparedness influencing the decision 55 per cent of the time.So how can they deal with the situation?The survey shows the importance of embracing innovation to better respond to challenges. Start planning now: Develop a disaster preparedness plan today. Evaluate how strategic technologies such as mobile, virtualization and cloud can help in those efforts.Implement strategic technologies: Adopt integrated cloud backup for offsite storage and disaster recovery, and automated physical to virtual (P2V) backup conversion so you can recover your physical system to a virtual machine in case of a server failure.Protect your information: Use comprehensive security and backup solutions to protect your physical, virtual and mobile systems. You may even opt to backup to the cloud.Review and test your disaster preparedness: This should be completed at least once a quarter. The Global SceneInternationally, The survey found that more than one-third of SMBs (35 per cent) are now taking advantage of mobile devices for business use. Virtualisation is also on their radar, with 34 per cent either currently deploying or already benefitting from server virtualisation. More popular still is cloud computing, with 40 per cent deploying public clouds and a similar number (43 per cent) implementing private clouds.Symantec reports that in many cases, the SMBs' desire to improve their disaster preparedness played a part in adopting these emerging technologies. In the case of private cloud computing, 37 per cent reported that disaster preparedness influenced their decision, similar to the 34 per cent who said it affected their commitment to public cloud adoption and server virtualisation. This held true with mobility as well, with disaster preparedness influencing the decision 36 per cent of the time.According to the survey, implementing these initiatives has improved the disaster preparedness of most of the respondents, particularly in the case of server virtualisation – 71 per cent reported that their disaster preparedness improved with virtualisation. In the case of private and public cloud they also saw improvement, according to 43 per cent and 41 per cent, respectively. And mobility increased their disaster preparedness 36 per cent of the time.Symantec commissioned ReRez Research to conduct the Disaster Preparedness Survey among SMBs in February and March of 2012. They contacted business and IT executives at 2,053 SMBs (with between five and 250 employees) in 30 countries. The survey has a reliability of 95 percent with +/- 2.2 per cent margin of error.
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Despite receiving a sustained flow of money into his insurance equity schemes, Lakshmikanth Reddy, executive vice president, investment, at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, is cautious in his approach to equities and prefers to sit on the fence and wait for the opportune time to invest in the stock market. "Though it's a look to buy market, today the number of investable opportunities are few," says Reddy and will prefer to buy once the price corrects.Speaking to Businessworld, Reddy says it's a drag market and agrees that there isn't much appetite for equity following high valuation and unfavourable macro economic indicator. He, however, isn't much worried about what happens in the Europe and US as he feels the Indian market will eventually be driven by what happens to our growth, specifically corporate profit growth. Reddy is of the opinion that Indian market will move sideways within a narrow band over the short-term, as there are no significant catalysts to move it sharply in either direction.Though he agrees that given the environment, investors should avoid equities, but at the same time, says it will not be prudent to ignore this important asset class because of uncertainty in the short-term. He feels it is extremely difficult for retail investors to predict market movements and they should opt for systematic investments in equities over a long term, particularly given that equities have become attractive after performing poorly for almost five years now.Excerpts from the conversation:How do you view the impact of the S&P downgrade on the Indian economy and equity markets?What the rating agency has done is bring forth all prevailing issues into their opinion to make it current – as such there has not been anything new or unknown that the market has discovered. Equity markets have underperformed for the last two years, notwithstanding the growth in economy, essentially for the reasons highlighted by the rating agency. However, it might have an impact on policy makers and if indeed some positive actions come forth on fiscal consolidation etc that will be a good outcome.Despite a rate cut why is the market not reacting positively? What are your concerns for the Indian equity market?Yes, the market has not really reacted positively to the much expected reversal of rate cycle. The accompanying central bank's commentary indicated that the likelihood and extent of further cuts could be much more moderate than what the market would have liked. The concerns plaguing the market are a slowdown in economic growth, particularly weak capital spending by the private sector, and therefore anaemic corporate earnings growth and the need for lower interest rates. In addition, negative surprises on the policy front in several areas have also dampened investor risk appetite.What is dragging the market and what is your overall view on the equity market for the next three to six months?The market is struggling with near-term issue of slow economic growth with high interest rates on one hand, and the longer-term prospect of reverting back to higher growth on the other. We are of the opinion that the market is likely to move sideways within a narrow band over the short-term, as there are no significant catalysts to move it sharply in either direction. Inflation falling on a consistent basis, with a possible fall in oil price could be a catalyst to move the market higher. On the other hand, negative surprise to forecast 7 per cent growth rate in FY13 with inflation persisting at high levels can take the market lower.What is your view on the overall financial market? Do you think the crisis in Europe as well as US is behind us and why?Europe and US would influence our market through the impact of capital flows rather than in any fundamental manner significantly. The critical question is whether there is any systemic risk to the global financial markets which can adversely impact capital flows. It appears that given the recent interventions by policymakers, the likelihood of such a systemic event is very low. Our markets will eventually be driven by what happens to our growth, specifically corporate profit growth.In the current market conditions where will you advice investors to invest? (Any short-term strategy)While high interest rates and sideways movement of equity markets will naturally tempt investors to avoid equities, it will not be prudent to ignore this important asset class because of uncertainty in the short-term. Since it is extremely difficult for retail investors to predict market movements it will be arduous for them to forecast when equities will start performing. We recommend systematic investments in equities over a long term, particularly given that equities have become attractive after performing poorly for almost five years now.Were you surprised with RBI cutting 50 bps in the last monetary policy? And why? Despite rate cuts why is the market still struggling for liquidity?The RBI move was a surprising one, the reaction was not as absolutely positive as it may have been due to the accompanying hawkish commentary of the central bank stating that inflation is still a major concern and the extent of further rate cuts could be small. The liquidity deficit is on account of several factors including possible liquidity drain on account of the central bank's intervention in the currency markets and a weak deposit growth in the banking system relative to credit demand.What is your assessment of the Indian economy?We are optimistic about long-term prospects of the economy. The economy has had a phenomenal decade of 2000s where significant changes happened across several sectors which created numerous opportunities for investors. The growth rate had picked up from 4-5 per cent to 8-9 per cent, prior to the recent cooling off. We expect the future to be good with high single digit growth rate on an average. However, given natural vagaries of an economic cycle, the markets will see years of bullish trends accompanied by years of bearish markets and investors should learn to take it in their stride.At ICICI Prudential Life Insurance what has been your current strategy of investing in equities?We are a net inflow company and the quantum of flow varies. As a policy we always maintain a well diversified portfolio with exposure to major segments of the economy. We are currently somewhat cautiously positioned on some capital goods sectors where there is over-capacity, some commodity stocks which are exposed to the global capital expenditure cycle and certain highly valued domestic discretionary consumption stocks. We are largely sector or market cap agnostic – our investment decision is a combination of fundamentals and valuations. However because of the size of our portfolio, we invest in small cap companies more by exception.
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There was a wonderful phrase in the '90s that defined the debate on foreign investment in India. Potato chips vs computer chips. Team Manmohan Singh that has to revive the economy, will remember this well. The phrase sounds a bit archaic now, but it was at the centre of a raging political and economic debate. Many corporate and political leaders felt that India should encourage investment in sectors that would strengthen the economy. Investment in sectors like technology and automobiles was preferred to sectors like food retail and drinks. While this was a shallow argument on the face of it, there was some merit to it. Investment in core sectors would create the enabling environment for all other investment to prosper and profit. A country can't and shouldn't create a system of apartheid for investment. Investment in both computer chips and potato chips should be freely allowed. Ironically though, India is back in a situation where it is encouraging potato chips over computer chips. Recent FDI in India have been in consumer product industries. So IKEA, Coca Cola, Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks have announced ambitious multi-billion dollar expansion in India. That's very well. It will surely energise the food and retail sector and offer even more choice to consumers. But where are the big FDI announcements in energy, transportation and hardware sectors? By going slow on reducing red tape and removing sectoral caps, India is actually discouraging serious investment. FDI proposals in defence production, pharmaceuticals and telecom hardware are viewed with skepticism and suspicion. Unless investment in core sector grows, business plans of consumer products companies that are hoping for rising personal consumption will be adversely affected. To add to this investment imbalance, the government is increasing the limits on portfolio investments. Even though the government says this is to support the rupee, this will lead to problems later. Fickle investment is being encouraged while loyal money is being made to negotiate an obstacle course. India has been allowed portfolio investment ahead of FDI. China did the opposite. It sought, encouraged and nurtured FDI projects while giving secondary priority to portfolio investment. This allowed China to create employment and develop heft in manufacturing sector. India found it easier to grow in services and financial sector. Manufacturing grew at a slower pace, having to jump through many more policy hoops. Even domestic investment in stuck in the same quagmire. With high cost of power, credit and talent Indian companies are losing their competitive edge. Small and medium companies are stagnating or shrinking. The larger groups are straining at the leash and desperately seeking avenues of growth. Until the India growth story resumes, leading companies are busy expanding abroad. The Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC, a global environmental think-tank, reports that India is among the three emerging economies, along with Brazil and China that is acquiring the most land elsewhere. In the last few years, Indian firms have acquired almost 7.4 million hectares in 129 separate deals. The land has been used for agriculture, forestry for wood or fibre, industries and mineral extraction, including petroleum.Consumers want potato chips, donuts but also power and roads. Mostly, they want more and better paying jobs that domestic and foreign direct investment can deliver. The imbalance in investment has to be corrected soon to ensure more consumers have more money in their pockets. India needs investment that increases income options, not just spending options. (Pranjal Sharma is a senior business writer. He can be contacted at pranjalx@gmail.com)
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I often stop to feel gratified that the number of people who follow me on the social networks has grown organically and without my having done very much. I don't have the huge six digit numbers that many others boast of... Nowhere near it... But the people who are in my network are engaged and interactive giving me a chance to actually know them and exchange ideas and information. At the same time, I also have followers who annoy me intensely and whom I get rid of at the first opportunity. And here's why.You know nothing about meMany a time, it becomes quite clear that a person has no idea who I really am and has just chanced upon my name somewhere and asked to join my network only to increase his or her numbers. The last thing I want to be is a statistic on someone's list. I need a connection, a common ground, something to base interaction, not a mutual addition to the overall follower number. On networks such as Twitter and Facebook, additional people just means additional noise. Since I'd like to make these networks useful, that's just a nuisance.I know nothing about youIf a person hasn't populated his or her profile with anything, there's little reason to accept an invitation or follow back. It's common enough on all the networks. On Twitter, I find that a person has nothing to say about his own interests and background. On LinkedIn, an unpopulated profile is even more frustrating and surprising. "Head of Self Employed" or some equivalent of that tells me nothing and gives me no reason at all to accept an invitation to connect. It also tells me that the person whose account the invitation is coming from isn't able to confidently define herself, reducing my confidence in the possibility of getting anything meaningful or useful out of future interactions.You just want to sellOn the other hand are connections where people immediately get down to pushing something at you a mere five seconds after you let them into your network. That could be a product, a cause, a request for a job, or just throwing content at you imagining that you have been waiting to read something from someone you have nothing to do with. On Twitter, it's called spam. On LinkedIn, just a step away and particularly annoying. Social networks are social for a reason. You connect to engage not to say ah, I got you, now can you do this for me?Meaningless interactionsThe number of networks one has to keep up with is getting daunting. Even if you can see that there's much use to be got out of your communities online, keeping up is difficult because all this networking is in addition to whatever else you do offline. In such circumstances, one welcomes specific and meaningful interaction rather than unnecessary exchanges like "Look forward to interacting with you" or "Nice to know you" and then follow that up by disappearing. Looking at my connections, I find that those who send these messages are actually the ones who interact the least. Ironic and just adding to the clutter.Don't overdo itJust saying something for the sake of saying something makes it easy to spot a person who really has nothing to say! Take all those people fill your timeline with quotations from everywhere. This may help them complete their quota of tweets for the day, but really if you wanted to read quotations you can easily get to a quotation encyclopedia. There is no shortage of quotation collections on the internet. Why would you follow back someone just to get out of context untimely quotations all of the time? There are many other ways of cluttering someone's timeline, such as by responding to everything he or she says without actually taking the conversation anywhere. This too is frustrating and time wasting.One good way of steering away from noise and making connections meaningful and specific instead would be to mentally draw a parallel with interaction offline. How likely are you to go up to someone and spout quotations from one minute to the next? How would it look if you went up to someone and just said hello, I want a job? And do you really want to go up to someone and say I'm talking to you because I have a certain quota of people who I need to talk to today! Use that yardstick and move towards engagement that is useful to you, your connection, and the network. Mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter
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Strategies are about implementation, otherwise they are useless! I think we can all agree on that. But many companies would implement things much more successfully if they reversed their dominant focus and concentrated on key performance drivers instead of detailed plans.When embarking on a new strategy or change program, many of us have experienced the same pattern.Following a top management decision, a project leader gets assigned to the implementation, sometimes with a pre-defined project team. The project leader brings everyone together in a nice hotel and after a quick team-building, starts working on the traditional "aim-goals-objectives-deliverables." More sophisticated teams go through a good Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) exercise, combined with risk assessment and stakeholder analysis. Then the team starts working on the plan by subgroup.So far so good. The finish date is specified, and the critical path is crystal clear for everyone. Let's start, we're already late!So the team engages in the execution phase, fully focused on delivering the defined tasks "on time, quality and budget." Does that sound familiar?Well, the point is that very often, implementations miss their expected outcome, or are so late that they fail to have the desired impact. Numbers vary depending on the study, but there seems to be a consensus that around 70 per cent of major change initiatives fail. Why does this happen?It would be easy just to put the blame on leadership. Of course, if the initial financial or technical parameters were wrong (for example in the case of mergers and acquisitions), or if the project's scope is not clearly defined and the initiative is not really supported by senior management, then we have a problem. If the resource providers have not formally given their approval, we have a problem. If the team has not been chosen with care and if the team members don't have a personal interest to make the project a success, we have a problem. If the leader in charge is not competent and respected, then again we have a problem.But these are obvious failings that a competent organization might be expected to recognize and correct. Perhaps the real issue is elsewhere, in the assumption we all take for granted: that the tasks we plan in order to reach the objectives are the right ones.Why are we so sure? And what if that assumption was encouraging us to do more of the "wrong thing" when facing execution challenges? Somehow, detailed plans, Gantt charts and heavy planning systems may make us "miss the point."In my view, the best protection against implementation failure is to reverse the dominant focus. Instead of focusing on the detailed plan, companies should look at these three key performance drivers: Scorecard indicators: they include time (milestones), financial and qualitative targets. They should describe very clearly what we would regard as success and failure; obviously the weight given to each category varies according to the specific initiative. Continuous control of the indicators will allow us never to lose sight of the big picture, and to know when our efforts start having an effect. This is far more important than controlling whether a particular task gets completed on time.Risks: whether internal or external, they have the potential to upset the destiny of an entire initiative. Continuous monitoring of their evolution in terms of exposure is absolutely critical, as is scenario planning with preventive and/or mitigating actions.Stakeholders: they include top management, the sponsor, the resource providers, opinion leaders and last but not least, the project team. In short, all those people who have some power to make a strategy succeed or fail. The engagement level of all stakeholders should be on the radar screen, because they are the ones who are constantly reassessing the project's value to the organization as a whole.The above does not mean that we should completely strike off procedural planning and tracking tools like "Gantt charts," or that project planners are not needed anymore. It only illustrates that the necessary detailed task planning should be left to (and owned by) the people in charge of execution, not the leader.Some may feel that there is nothing much new in the above. The tools described are all well known. Agreed, but how many teams still focus on performance drivers beyond "quickly visiting" them during the kick-off meeting? How many of us really "reverse the dominant focus?"Strategy implementation approaches that are obsessed with task progress often cause organizations to miss the real problems and delay the identification of warning signals. Being "on time" does not mean that a project is healthy, and being late doesn't necessarily mean failure. Even for those initiatives for which timely delivery is the main success factor, being hostage to a plan is counterproductive because it inhibits the creativity needed to constantly find the best way of reaching the objectives. Considering the accelerating pace with which external changes might influence a project, keeping such flexibility could be essential. Where time is the key, rather than the detailed plan, a risk management focus may actually offer the best chance of sticking to the deadline. Although leadership is clearly part of the equation in the success or failure of strategic initiatives, the model used to drive the project can make the difference. For example, a similar approach was used successfully in the manufacturing division of Serono S.A., a leading biotechnology company acquired in 2007 by Merck KGaA.Without integrated, rigorous and constant monitoring of key performance drivers, how can we expect to progress in the right direction? It's like running in the dark and expecting to reach the destination just because we put one foot in front of the other with a lot of enthusiasm!(Marco Mancesti is R&D Director at IMD)
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I've always believed LinkedIn, that one professional powerhouse of a social network that everyone under-uses, needs a usability-design makeover. It's got all sorts of features that are way too below the surface and I find that even if someone points out what I'm looking for, next time around, I forget and have to start all over again to look for a specific function. Compared with other networks, LinkedIn loses out on an intuitive, contextual, compelling experience. The user experience received a booster shot of appeal when LinkedIn came up with a very cool Android app which, in some modes, reminds me of the tiled look from Pulse – and all the other apps that have creatively copied the look. Even now, on a large-screen Android touch phone, the app looks better than the version available so far for the iPhone. And now, finally the iPhone app has received a makeover and is also universal to become the official app for the iPad, complete with Retina Display support. When an app or website looks good, the invitation to use increases exponentially. And there's a stark difference between the website – which still feels more like a website than a network – and the apps for both Android and now the iPad and iPhone. Now that the app is in place, here are the five best things about it:SimplicityAs you start up the app, you don't have to waste a moment wondering what to do and where to look. It's as simple as three options: browse through updates and news, check your own profile and updates, and see what's in your inbox. The opening interface is clean and self explanatory. A lot of the deeper things you can get into on the site such as view stats, company pages etc won't work on the app, but the top level activities are right there.SpeedBecause the app is simpler it's that much quicker. It is also speedier on the iPad (or Android devices) because these touch devices offer a different experience with browsing speed. The clunkiness of a website is out of the equation. When you can get to what you want without having to wait impatiently, you would obviously tend to use the network more readily.MobilityAt LinkedIn, they figured that 22 per cent users now access the site via mobile devices. This number is up from 8 per cent a year ago and will only continue to go up as the tablet and smartphone market increases. If LinkedIn wants users to spend more time on the site, it has to get mobility spot-on. They've also found that people access the site late morning -- coffee time -- and there's another slot in the evening. That's why the app focuses on making content more browsable and lean-back. The updates and news in particular are almost Flipboard-like. Looking through your messages too you can slide out a left bar All in all, the experience is now 'tablety' and not just that of a website on a tablet. The app also has a more visual feel, which improves its browsability.RelevanceOn the iPad app, LinkedIn has tried to bring up front, the information users find most relevant or interesting. The calendar syncing feature is one of these. Link your calendar from the phone or tablet and you can get information on people you are planning to meet. Another piece of information that's right up front is who viewed your profile. Obviously users like that one, whether it's useful or not.SocialSharing on the LinkedIn site isn't exactly difficult, but it just got easier with the app. When sharing options are at hand and just a matter of a touch, engagement could go up. The Groups are also accessible without having to look too hard in the minimalistic interface of the app.LinkedIn has always had to walk that tightrope between being a job seeker's network and a full professional one. To get users to spend more time within, they will have to do still more to make the network more compelling. And this is a good, if somewhat late, beginning.
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