Connecting a global workforce

Like many international organisations, Philips face a challenge when running and managing their employee events. Sometimes the same event can be hosted at the same time, at different corners of the world. To enable them to gauge how an app might facilitate matters, initially we were asked to build a working proof of concept that they were able to use at an event in 2014.

This initial proof of concept was deemed a success and managed to secure further investment for what is now the the Philips event app. What this does is allow multiple and different events to be run at any number of times and locations through the one app. A benefit of this is that employees with the app don’t ever have to download a new one, and the publishing system is able to push content to them for whatever events they attend.

Integrating with Socialcast, means that we can keep the security of the system locked down as well as keeping it convenient. Dealing with registration as well as employee to employee communications, it leverages the existing capabilities of their social network. The app has been built to run natively on iOS and Android with a Web app to serve other platforms.

We have included all of the standard screens that one would expect from an event App – Agenda, Speakers venue details etc as well as some rather more sophisticated features. These included voting and feedback – the more delegates participate, the more points they are awarded, these being displayed on a leaderboard.

The publishing platform is built using the Laravel PHP framework -this is used by staff at Philips to create publish and manage events to delegates. All of the different app versions are served by a single, uni ed API which makes development fast and easy, and ensures that all apps have access to the latest data changes.

The app provides delegates with enhanced social tools, including realtime voting across multiple events. This enables speakers to pose a question to the delegates and the results to be displayed within the event locations. A benefit if this is that should delegates not be able to even attend the event in person, they can still participate in key votes, read keynotes read speeches and network with delegates who are in attendance, albeit via a mobile. With each iteration we provide further functionality and refinement. UX and Design is managed by us too so the whole thing is kept tidy as it is meant to be.