Offline-Ready Mobile App Gives Sales Teams Instant Access to Content

A medical device company needed a better way to support its field sales team. Their therapy system requires careful explanation and trust-building with both physicians and patients. This made their hospital visits and product education efforts critical to adoption.

The sales team frequently traveled to hospitals across the country, meeting with medical professionals to demonstrate the product, explain the underlying research, and guide conversations around insurance coverage and long-term patient outcomes. Before each visit, sales reps would prepare physical packets of materials: brochures, white papers, clinical research summaries, and educational videos, all printed, packed, and manually assembled. This process consumed time and budget. More importantly, the team often found that once they left the hospital, the printed materials were misplaced, tossed out, or simply forgotten.

They knew that digitizing this process could deliver measurable benefits: easier preparation, reduced printing costs, and more lasting impact after the meeting. They imagined a centralized “sales playbook” accessible from their company-issued iPads—an app that could organize sales materials, allow for curated presentations, and instantly share resources with prospects via email. They needed a purpose-built mobile application that could work reliably in hospital environments (often with limited internet access) and scale with their evolving sales strategy.

That’s when the company turned to Emergent Software.

Emergent Software partnered with the client to build a custom mobile sales enablement tool that addressed all their core needs: centralized access to marketing and sales assets, offline functionality, and seamless email follow-up.

The foundation of the solution was a “headless” Umbraco CMS, chosen for its flexibility and ease of use by non-technical teams. Unlike traditional CMS implementations that power public websites, this instance of Umbraco functioned purely as a secure content repository. Sales materials such as brochures, PDFs, images, videos, and clinical research documents were uploaded to Umbraco, tagged, and categorized for easy retrieval. This allowed the marketing and communications team to maintain full control over the content: updating materials, replacing outdated versions, and organizing the asset library without requiring developer intervention.

Emergent provided training and documentation to ensure the internal team could confidently manage their new system. Once the CMS was in place, the next step was building the front-end interface that sales reps would use on the road.

Emergent designed and developed a progressive web app (PWA) using React, tailored for use on iPads. The app allowed users to log in securely with their company email address, browse or search the available materials, and create curated playlists tailored to specific hospital visits. These playlists could be pre-downloaded for offline use, a critical requirement given the often spotty or nonexistent Wi-Fi access in clinical environments. During a meeting, the rep could launch the playlist, view all items in a seamless scrollable interface, and walk their audience through the materials without needing an internet connection.

After the presentation, the app made follow-up effortless. The sales rep could enter a client’s email address and, with one click, send a branded, customized email containing all the materials from the meeting. Once the device was back online, the email would send automatically, ensuring fast and professional follow-up without additional manual effort.

Throughout the project, Emergent Software collaborated closely with the client's marketing and IT teams to ensure the solution was aligned with brand guidelines, HIPAA-compliant (no patient data is transmitted or stored), and scalable for future enhancements. The combination of a modern front-end experience with a flexible backend CMS gave the client full control and future-proofed the system for additional use cases like analytics or CRM integrations.

The launch of the mobile sales presentation app marked a major step forward in how the client engaged with hospital stakeholders. By digitizing their sales toolkit, they not only eliminated the cost and waste associated with printed materials but also significantly streamlined the reps’ preparation time before each visit.

With the new app, sales reps now have instant access to the most up-to-date content. They can tailor their presentations on the fly, adapting to the specific needs or interests of their audience. The offline-first functionality ensures that even in areas with poor connectivity, the user experience remains smooth and professional.

From a marketing standpoint, the headless Umbraco CMS has proven to be a game-changer. The team can make real-time updates to the library of materials without developer help. Launching a new product or campaign no longer requires reprinting collateral or updating slide decks—just upload the new assets into Umbraco, and they’re immediately available in the app.

Most importantly, the ability to instantly email materials after a presentation increases the chances that prospects will actually engage with the content again, supporting better follow-up conversations and deeper education. Anecdotally, the sales team has reported higher engagement, improved confidence in presenting materials, and increased productivity on the road.

The internal team described Emergent Software’s contributions as flexible, responsive, and strategically aligned. As one stakeholder put it: “Emergent Software’s speed and flexibility made them stand out.”