Outlook is Accenture’s journal of high-performance business, delivering the most cutting-edge insights of our organization’s experts into business, industry and technology and how leading companies can leverage these insights to outperform competitors. We have long delivered these key industry insights via our web-based version of Outlook. During 2011, however, we noticed that while these improvements enhanced the user experience on a PC and laptop, they did not provide an optimum user experience for visitors accessing Outlook through a tablet. Furthermore, our own web analytics identified a fast- growing percentage of accenture.com visitors originating from tablets, specifically iPads.

In response, our goal was to both expand the reach of Outlook by leveraging the unique capabilities of the iPad, and also demonstrate our company’s capabilities in this new space. To realize these opportunities, we launched our effort to create the Outlook iPad app.

Our first step in the effort involved extensive research into our target audience’s use of tablet computers, specifically iPads. An analysis of our website traffic showed about 92% of the tablet visits coming from an iPad. With this insight in mind, we next worked on designing an app experience that would bring Outlook to life by supplementing the excellent editorial with opportunities for our readers to interact, share and discover.

Specifically, we integrated the editorial with rotating facts, videos and surveys to encourage more interaction with our insights. We also leveraged the iPad’s ability to offer easier sharing through social media and e-mail with just simple tap, easier contact with the authors and easier saving of the articles. Beyond leveraging these functional advantages, we offered a visual experience that would leverage the iPad’s screen dimensions and the device’s ability to display content in both a horizontal and vertical orientation.

The new app (available at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/accenture-outlook-journal/id481462236?ls=1&mt=8) provides access to the latest Outlook content in an iPad-friendly format, with articles and navigation optimized for iPad interaction. The app comes with the robust features that a mobile app experience provides, including the ability to bookmark favorite articles, set preferences for the latest insights by industry or topic, share articles with colleagues via e-mail and social media, and download issue PDFs directly to your iPad. Since launching the app in April of 2012, we have seen rapid adoption exceeding our expectations, with more than 7,000 downloads to date.