This month’s featured Kashoo community member is Move Creative, a two-year-old, two-person app design and development shop led by Jeff Abele, HQ’d in Lincoln, Nebraska. According to Jeff, Move “produces custom apps for clients ranging from stat applications for [sports] leagues to video-heavy apps for national agriculture shows.” So it’s safe to say that Jeff and his team know a thing or two about apps. That’s why we were delighted to hear what he had to say about the Kashoo iPad app and his experience using our software. (This is all the patting-ourselves-on-the-back we’ll do in this post, we promise.)

I just started using Kashoo a couple of months ago and have been very impressed with the overall product. What initially sold me was the iPad app. I am an app developer and know how difficult it is to create top-quality apps, and you guys really hit it out of the park. The toughest thing to do is to keep apps in sync with a website and I’ve been impressed how flawless that is so far.”

OK, enough of that! Back to Jeff and his business…

Meet Move Creative

Jeff mentions in depth how the iPad is changing the way he runs his business. This supports a broad trend we’re seeing amongst small businesses everywhere: the iPad becoming a critical piece of business technology.

“We use the iPad in our business in many different settings. We use apps like Minimal Folio, Keynote and Prezi for presentations. Once we have the client, we typically use apps such as Paper (to sketch mockups), Moodboard (to prepare themes for the client to look at) and Blueprint (to document the flow of the app). We wanted the same level of engagement with our financial software which is why we turned to Kashoo. As User Interface designers we value an easy-to-use, easy-to-learn software and Kashoo fit the needs for us. We are not accountants and don’t want to be accountants. But we needed software that our accountant would also be able to integrate with and Kashoo fit that for us.

The iPad is such a unique tool for small businesses because of the low cost and amount of software available for it. The apps are becoming increasingly more niche as the audience expands which means that one-size fits all software is becoming a thing of the past. In the past I might use Photoshop to prepare presentations, mockups, moodboards and even flowcharts. Now I only use Photoshop for the final graphics and instead use specific apps for these other tasks that were built with one need in mind. Of course, none of this would be possible without cloud access that allows easy sharing between devices.”

And for those wondering exactly what sorts of apps Move Creative dreams up for the agricultural industry and why, here’s what Jeff had to say:

Since we are based in the heart of the Great Plains much of our local economy is driven by the agricultural industry. The past two years have seen a rapid growth in the use of technology by farmers and ranchers as the cellular data networks have expanded into rural regions. Most new agricultural equipment is becoming increasingly tech-driven and farmers are now controlling their irrigation equipment with the use of iPhone/Android apps.

Small family farms are becoming a thing of the past as larger farming companies take over.These companies naturally need more technology for data-driven decisions. We see tremendous opportunity in this market. In the past year we have built apps for Market Journal, which is a nationwide ag[riculture] market television show, and apps for the Nebraska State Fair, where we focused on the agricultural side. We are also just getting ready to roll out an extremely niche agricultural app that enables farmers to record how much manure they are spreading on their fields. It will help them take measurements and even determine the nutrient content in the manure. This is just an example of how these mobile devices are making niche software more and more accessible.”

At the end of the day, it’s all about mobile manure measurement, right? Maybe not, but the guys at Move Creative are doing great stuff. And we’re glad they’re a part of the Kashoo family!