Recently, The Hartford, John Hancock, and JP Morgan have all been in the news regarding their decisions to equip some wholesalers with iPads. The rationale was fairly consistent across the three companies: leverage the greater presentation capabilities and impressiveness of the iPad versus a laptop, and remove the burden of carrying large amounts of material and technology. JPMorgan appears to be seeking even more out of the new technology as it is rolling-out a presentation app that offers greater functionality than the native web-browser-based version.

From a sales enablement perspective, the iPad represents an incredibly valuable platform: It ensures that sales people will be relying solely on the materials they can access on the device. Whereas in the past, field sales people may have used outdated presentations that resided on their laptop hard drive, now consistent, current presentations can be pushed out to them with a high probability of 100% compliance. In fact, a presentation template app could even enable the real-time creation of a prospect-ready presentation based on input from the sales person. Likewise, apps could deliver, at the touch of the screen, fully updated product comparisons or ROI calculators. Moreover, usage of these tools would now be significantly more measurable.

In other words, the use of iPads by sales is a classic “win-win”: sales gets a slick gadget and can get rid of bulky papers and clunky laptops; sales management gets increased compliance and, with it, consistency.