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Regional publisher launches app on top 100 businesses

A regional publisher has developed an app to allow people to find out more about the leading 100 businesses across the area.

Archant has created the ‘Top 100′ app which profiles the performance of the leading 100 businesses in Norfolk and Suffolk with sales of more than £37m.

The app, which is currently available for iPad and iPhone devices, builds on the success of a Top 100 project by the Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times, which includes features in print and online.

Journalists were keen to extend the scope of the project and turned to the Archant Dialogue team to develop an app version of the listing.

The team behind the Top100 app are pictured, from left, Shaun Lowthorpe, James Hustler, Cat Evans and Richard Berry.

The team behind the Top100 app are pictured, from left, Shaun Lowthorpe, James Hustler, Cat Evans and Richard Berry.

The publisher is hailing the project as an example of the One Archant approach, which encourages more working together across the company.

Shaun Lowthorpe, business and publishing editor at Archant, said: “The Top 100 is one of our flagship B2B products, which is also incredibly popular among the business community in Norfolk and Suffolk.

“We noticed that there was a demand from users and our partners to develop a fully digital version, and we turned to the Dialogue team to help us realise our app ambitions.

“We’re delighted with the app – the design looks fantastic, and it really does bring the Top 100 to your fingertips, which is exactly what we wanted to achieve.”

Users of the app, which is free to download, can also explore listings in more depth through click-through links to Linkedin, Twitter and Google maps.

An android version is now being developed and the project team is working with Archant’s marketing team to promote the app across the business community.

Shaun and partnerships manager Gary Attfield led the project team, which included digital editor Cat Evans, Archant Dialogue’s app developer Richard Berry and video editor James Hustler, with input from the editorial design team led by Le-Anne Reeves, graphic journalist Annette Hudson, EDP business editor Ben Woods, and EADT business editor Duncan Brodie.

The app can be downloaded from iTunes.

12 comments

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  • August 19, 2015 at 1:39 pm
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    Another non print initiative/ launch by Archant, surely this used to be an in paper pull out ad feat type thing didn’t it?
    Not distancing themselves from traditional newsprint by any chance are they?

    I just wonder how many people will actually go to the trouble of downloading it as opposed to seeing it in paper? Time will tell

    And they actually have someone called a ‘ partnerships manager’?
    Dear oh dear
    Who said Archant was top heavy with managers and fancy titles

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  • August 19, 2015 at 5:44 pm
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    9 people to produce an app?
    Beggars belief
    ” we noticed there was a demand from our users and partners for this app” Really?
    Why?
    Wasn’t the in print version all that was needed?
    What benefit can there be to having this directory type information at your finger tips on a phone or tablet?

    However if demand is already high it will be interesting to see how many downloads of this sought after app there are not counting the ones the staff will be expected to download.

    So many managers, so many editors,so little for them to do.
    Think Mr Henry needs to do a reality check to find out how many staff he has,what they actually do all day and more to the point what they actually contribute to the business.
    And I thought the days of job creation schemes were over
    Apparently not at Archant

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  • August 19, 2015 at 8:11 pm
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    Does Archant really honestly have a “partnership manager ” ?
    Really? Seriously?
    Someone who “manages partnerships”?

    It’s amazing how some business make such a success of their business without employing the services of a partnerships manager
    Call me old fashioned but isn’t any sales rep worth his or her salt in effect a partnership manager?
    i know the company is known to be top heavy with managers but having someone employed to manage partnerships smacks of finding something for someone to do.

    Anyway,the app sounds very nice

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  • August 20, 2015 at 8:38 am
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    Presumably this is a free download and free for the businesses to be Included?

    Let’s hope this latest diversion from focusing on the core business is more successful,has more users and is more popular than their previous non print distraction Mustard TV.

    Though quite why anyone would want to install an app to get links to selected social media ‘at their fingertips’ for a few local businesses when it’s hardly challenging to go to these businesses own sites as and when you want to is beyond me.

    i can only assume there is money to be made from it otherwise why would you take the staff time and resources of a considerable number of people to produce something that’s not adding to the bottom line profits? It certainly has little if any real or end user value that I can see.

    Is this not a case of finding a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist?

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  • August 20, 2015 at 12:52 pm
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    As an app developer the biggest problem anyone faces when trying to get an app used is awareness.
    I imagine Archant will be stuffing their papers full of filler ads to promote it, they might as well as there’s plenty of available space in their papers these days so a few more of their own ads won’t make much difference and unlike a real business looking to launch an app it won’t cost them anything to advertise its presence so there’s nothing to lose.

    If you have the skills it’s easy to devise an app, I develop many for leading brands and businesses,but the difficult part is letting people know it’s there,giving them enough reason to want to download it then giving it enough unique and handy useable content to make them use it time and again and not see it as wasted space on their screens be they i phone,tablet or android
    Many apps look pretty enough but have little real user value (no real usp) and after a short while if not used,are deleted.
    At this stage I cannot see the reason or benefit for anyone going to the trouble of downloading an app that sounds like it’s just a collection of clickable links to 100 businesses social media sites?

    What is the apps purpose and who would use or need this information which is already instantly available on the rare occasions the end user has the need to find it.

    if it’s purpose is to turn a printed product into a digital one or as an addition to the print version and get additional or packed add on revenue from a non news print source then I can see the reason they’ve taken this route albeit for their own sins as opposed to the listed businesses or end user.

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  • August 21, 2015 at 12:13 pm
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    There’s lots of presumptions here – and blatant dislike of Archant – as a neutral, I’d love to understand why you all comment with disregard for the app when many of you haven’t even downloaded it?

    The last comment above makes a lot of very valid and realistic points but admits to not downloading it with “an app that sounds like it’s just a collection of clickable links to 100 businesses social media site”

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  • August 21, 2015 at 12:16 pm
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    Just had a look at it,all very nice but what actual use is it? It’s just a series of click through links for the companies listed and old news pieces from Archants files so again what purpose does it serve the end user and why would anyone download it?
    I’m also struggling to determine who the actual end user would be for this?

    Surely the purpose of an app is to be used on the move via portable device to give instant access and to fulfil a particular purpose,I just can’t see what the purpose of this one is?

    It simply appears to be one of Archants regular pull outs converted from print to digital thus ticking the digital boxes that Mssrs Bax and Henry want to see ticked.
    Another vanity project like Mustard TV serving little purpose other than to be seen to be doing something in the electronic media fields but as with all things web based its hard to see where the financial benefit to the company is in this.
    Maybe it’s a self serving exercise to show they can produced an app albeit one with no obvious purpose in doing so.
    They really should stick to improving their core products rather than straying into territory they know little about unless as has been said previously they are distancing themselves from news print and this is just another element in that process.
    Nice but pointless chaps,though it probably kept a few people busy and gave a project manager a project to manage.

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  • August 21, 2015 at 3:42 pm
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    As a traditional media person with 25+ years experience in print I admit I’m not too digitally minded but isn’t this more an electronic reader version of a paper pull out section rather than an app as we would tend to know it?
    Like Dave I too can’t see the purpose of it unless by clicking the links on the various businessss shown scores a point or registers a viewer for Archant as opposed to registering as a click through for the actual business featured if going direct to the business’s own web pages,
    All beyond me this one so if someone can enlighten me i would love to know
    At the minute I cannot see the purpose or benefit to the busines,user or Archant unless it is an operation in massaging various peoples egoes

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  • August 22, 2015 at 7:27 pm
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    Has anybody mentioned how incompetent the investigations unit is yet?

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  • August 24, 2015 at 8:02 am
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    I doubt ‘ journalists were keen to extend the scope of..’
    I think it’s highly likely that the commercial people wanted to milk some more revenue from this in paper pull out not the editorial team as I think journalists are hard pushed to cope with their workloads as it is, however if there’s a special team at Archant to do this kind of ‘The Apprentice’ type task then they obviously have too much time on their hands.
    Oh and I too can’t see why anyone would want to have this information with them 24/7
    It’s hardly essential go to stuff is it.

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  • August 24, 2015 at 1:13 pm
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    In my opinion,the person most qualified to critique this is ‘ freelancer’ the app designer who makes some very valid points and you are making assumptions too ”instead of slating’ by assuming few have downloaded this app when only two that I can see claim not to, unless of course you have access to Archants download statistics?

    it’s not necessary for someone in his or her line of work to have to download every app before being able to comment on it, they must see apps all the time and the points made are to usability for the downloader plus the reasons for developing this thing in the first place, even with tons of free ad space being given to getting it launched and downloaded.
    I have seen this on a friends iphone who works at Archant and who was ‘encouraged’ to download it, and yes its spinning coggy piece to camera-ey is all very nice but it is as has been said just a series of clickable links to the featured business’s sites via LinkedIn fb, websites and maps so not the kind of stuff you’d need 24/7 ‘ at your fingertips’
    Maybe if they had developed this from the end users point of view rather than their own it might have been of some obvious use.
    as it is it all looks very pointless as an app and no better than the in paper version that’s been produced for some time .

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  • August 25, 2015 at 2:02 pm
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    By way of an update for you @braganza I see they have included a list of credits on the last page and it’s interesting to see the ‘Partnerships Manager’ has since been given the grand title of Projects Director( partners)

    I can only assume there’s a special department who comes up with all these managers titles,probably called something like “The Internal Managerial Titles Development and Allocation Unit ” headed up by a IMTDAAU projects manager and manned by managers, assistants, deputies and team leaders awaiting deployment.

    Rome,Nero,Indians and Chiefs spring to mind?

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