BizTXT: SMS-enable Your Business

Mobile phones have become a natural extension of individuals. Send a message to someone, he gets it directly. That someone can, if he chooses to, directly respond to the message. So if you want to get a message across, it’s now probably best to send him a “text”.

In a country such as ours where SMS is predominantly becoming the preferred medium for casual, facelesss communication over actual voice calls, it makes sense to consider tapping into the advantage presented by the ubiquity of mobile phones.

Companies now recognize the benefits of extending their reach to remote users such as their customers, their suppliers, their partners, and employees. The SMS medium provides a cost-effective and targeted means of communicating commerce messages.

In response to this need, telco providers in the Philippines have come up with SMS-based corporate solutions that allow companies to send SMS broadcasts. Bulk messages are offered discounted rates per text message. There is a solution fit for companies that need to blast marketing messages, announcements, promos, etc. However, these are one-way, outgoing traffic only. Purely informational.

Now, there’s a growing list of use-case scenarios that require messages that are transactional in nature. In other words, companies right now are looking for SMS-based solutions that will allow targeted remote users to respond to the business messages they receive through text OR, more importantly, empower these remote users to initiate business transactions with their Line of Business (LOB) applications.

A Philippine IT solutions provider, which focuses on commerce solutions, called SAKLOLO.NET has conceptualized and developed a unique middleware called BizTXT Application Gateway (BizTXT) to handle the two-way, transactional traffic between the corporate’s LOB applications and the remote mobile phone users.

With BizTXT, the following use-cases are now possible:

• Keyword-based Communication
  • Alerts /Announcements (i.e. triggered / automated alerts via integration with back-end — example, Network Management Application, Customer Relationship Mgmt software)
  • Reminders
  • Bill (can be automated via integration with Billing or Accounts Payable system)
• Self-service transactions
  • Inquiry (Pull info)
  • Reserve / Book
  • Order
  • Apply

One of the first companies to take advantage of operational efficiencies as provided by BizTXT is MEDICard Philippines, Inc., a leading healthcare provider in the country. You can find the detailed use-cases here.

For companies looking to SMS-enable their operations by integrating BizTXT with their back-end systems, the service is now initially available with Globe Telecom / Innove Communications, while another local telco will be offering BizTXT as part of their corporate solutions soon.