Developer ‘seeing a lot of demand from heads of investor relations’
IR.mobile, a new app designed to help IROs organize contacts and keep track of meeting histories, institutional profiles and more, has been launched for iPhones by IR.soft, a UK-based developer specializing in IR software.
The iPhone app, which serves as a mobile extension for IR.manager, is meant to extend the use of IR.manager and take advantage of mobile capabilities such as voice calls, mapping, note dictation and video calls with Skype or Apple’s FaceTime app, the company says.
‘This is something a lot of our clients have been asking for,’ says Arnaud Robin, managing director of IR.soft. ‘We’ve been seeing a lot of demand from heads of IR and users who would normally not spend a lot of time looking at databases on PCs. This just makes a lot of sense for them.’
When online, the app synchronizes with IR.manager, the software designed to help IROs and management teams to keep records of meeting histories and notes, manage relationships with investors and analysts, analyze the company’s shareholder base, create briefing notes, profile institutional investors and email time-sensitive news.
The app retains full functionality while offline, according to IR.soft. It taps into intelligence data feeds from FactSet and others, including profiles of more than 200,000 institutional contacts and 30,000 buy-side and sell-side firms around the world.
Although the app is free, users must have a subscription to IR.manager to use it. IR.mobile is designed for the iPhone 5 and is compatible for use with all generations of the iPad and iPad mini, plus the iPhone 3GS and later and iPod touch devices of the third generation and later.
Robin predicts the app, which was officially launched on June 12, could change the way many IROs interact with their IR knowledge base. ‘The way IROs and management going into meetings would consume data is through reports,’ he says. ‘We’re putting the information directly in the hands of IROs and traveling teams, and that will change how they interact, although it’s going to take a little while for them to get used to it.’
The company, which today released the 3.1 version of IR.manager ‒ which is required for seamless operation of IR.mobile ‒ predicts the number of IR.mobile subscribers will increase as of July 1.
Robin says the company doesn’t immediately plan to release an Android version of IR.mobile as ‘right now the demand comes from the iPhone. Until recently, everybody in investor relations was in BlackBerry. That’s being phased out. We’re going to periodically re-evaluate our priorities. For now, the iOS platform is number one among IROs.’
