Introduction
Every business tries to get as close as it can to its customers. The aim is to keep customers up to date with company news, products, service updates, relevant information about their accounts, or to send them notifications for important events. E-mail is widely used for these purposes and usually is an appropriate way to inform customers but there is a drawback to using email exclusively for communication with customers. Not all customers have a habit of checking their mailboxes regularly, so information can be delivered in a matter of hours or even days and this is not fast enough. It is in any organization’s interest for the sake of its public image to make it better. Mobile phones are a commodity today, and SMS (Short Message Service) messages offer an intriguing solution. Messages are delivered in a matter of seconds, and customers are far more likely to receive and read them.
Definition
SMS: SMS stands for Short Message Service. It is a method of communication that sends text between cell phones, or from a PC or handheld to a cell phone. The "short" part refers to the maximum size of the text messages of 160 characters. For some alphabets, such as Chinese, the maximum SMS size is 70 characters.
There are many electronic information dissemination tools including e-mail, websites and online journals, MMS and SMS. However, the widely adopted and used one is the electronic-mail system which poses some challenges that include; a high rate of outage (High Failure rates) compared to SMS, Limited access to the internet for e-mail (there are more people that own mobile telephones than those that can access internet services), SMS is faster and more efficient than e-mail and the Internet is more expensive and not widely accessible especially in Africa. (Read my previous piece on Cloud Computing)
SMS therefore presents an opportunity to effective interaction and outreach to customers, stakeholders and any organization’s clients within an acceptable time frame.
Applications of SMS Applications
The possibilities for integrating SMS into business applications and organizational operations are unlimited. Some of the applications of SMS include subscription services to get medication reminders sent to your phone, weather alerts, news headlines, books and novels broken into 160-character chapters. Internet search engines such as Yahoo and Google have short messaging services that enable users to get information such as driving directions, GPS systems, movie show times, and local business listings by just texting a query to the search engines phone number. Social networking services such as Face book use SMS to alert people who has updated their status or commented on the ones status.
Mobile Banking / Mobile Money
In East Africa, SMS has provided the people living in remote (rural) areas with an opportunity to get closer to services that had in the past seemed impossible or hard to reach. Mobile money service hosted and managed by the telecommunication players like MTN, UTL, ZAIN and others has provided a platform for business to get closer to their clients for example;
1. The Ugandan National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) in a partnership with the telecommunication players have lunched an application through which its clients can pay water bills using the mobile money services and this has greatly improved the otherwise hectic payment system of long queues in the banks and NWSC cash offices.
2. Money transfers i.e. send and receive money to and from friends and family. This has greatly helped the population as the bank coverage especially in the rural areas is quite small, infact some people travel as much as more than 50 KMs to access the neared banking hall.
Health Care systems
In health care systems, SMS applications have been deployed to improve people’s lives. IBM, Vodafone, and Novartis used text messages to manage supplies of anti-malarial drugs in Tanzania. The program run a five-month pilot in 135 villages in Tanzania, where health care staff receive automated text messages that prompted them to check the remaining stock of anti-malarial drugs each week. Then, staff would reply to a database in the UK with current stock levels via text messages sent through a toll-free number, so deliveries could be made before supplies run out. During the first few weeks of the program, the number of health clinics that ran out of drugs was reduced by as much as 75%. Vodafone developed the SMS technology in conjunction with technology partner Mats Soft.
The technology was used to track supplies of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) drugs and Quinine injectables, both of which are key to reducing the number of deaths from malaria. The mosquito-borne disease causes nearly one million deaths in Africa each year, mostly among pregnant women and young children, and many people die because they simply lack quick access to vital medication.
At the Chipulukuso rural health centre in Ndola, Zambia's Copper belt province, an HIV test is done, blood samples taken and then transported to a central regional hospital for analysis. The results are then sent back to the rural centre within 3 to 5 days using SMS in a process that used to sometimes take up to 10 weeks.
Education systems
SMS applications have been used in learning management systems especially to monitor performance of students by accessing their examination results. The ministry of Education and sports in Uganda launched an SMS application called Zorilla that enables a student, parent or anyone interested (and in the know of the students registration number) to access the student’s results by sending an SMS request and receive a reply from the system within a couple of seconds, giving all results of examinations sat by that particular candidate.
SMS for disaster preparedness
SMS applications have been used to alert the general public about disaster preparedness by countries that face disasters such as tsunamis. Australia used SMS alerts to its nationals to inform them to prepare for a tsunami. A tsunami warning was issued for coastal communities from Tasmania to Hervey Bay by the Bureau of Meteorology at 10.30pm on Saturday March 27th 2010 after the Chilean earthquake, measuring 8.8 on the richer scale, hit.
Advertising
Through SMS, many businesses have been able to reach out to potential clients on the new products and services on offer, making shopping easy and interesting thus enhancing the competition between various players.
Advantages of SMS
SMS provides the following advantages;
a) SMS is a store-and-forward service, meaning that when one sends a text message, it does not go directly to the intended recipient’s cell phone. The advantage of this method is that the cell phone doesn't have to be active or in range. The message is stored in the SMSC (for days if necessary) until the cell phone is turned on or moved into range, at which point the message is delivered. The message can be stored on the recipient’s SIM card until it’s deleted.
b) SMS is often less time-consuming to send than making a phone call or send an e-mail.
c) It is more discreet than a phone conversation, making it the ideal form for communicating when you don't want to be overheard.
d) SMS can be used to send a message to a large number of people at a time, either from a list of contacts or to all the users within a particular area. This service is called broadcasting and is used by companies to contact groups of employees or by online services to distribute news and other information to subscribers.
e) Due to the limited accessibility to internet services in Uganda, SMS provides an opportunity for a wider reach for service providers.
f) Single international standard for SMS allows use of the same enabling software to send information over multiple mobile networks (for example GSM to CDMA and vice versa).
g) Ability to identify the sender mobile phone number allows deployment of interactive work flow applications.
h) International delivery allows information accessibility irrespective of the location of origin/destination mobile user.
Limitations of SMS
a) Missing broadcast functionality limits the message throughput. A paging system can theoretically reach unlimited number of terminal devices whereas SMS requires each device to be paged sequentially one by one. Using GSM modem based SMS gateway allows a throughput of 480 to 720 SMS messages per hour per modem. Using multiple modems will increase the throughput.
b) Mobile operators who provide SMS messaging usually do not guarantee any service level i.e. delivery of message within certain time. However, 95% of SMS get delivered almost instantaneously.
c) Each SMS (in English language) is limited to 160 characters. This limitation is easily countered by splitting of long messages in to multiple messages with user-friendly pagination to identify the sequence.
The few limitations of SMS as outlined above are clearly outnumbered and outweighed by the numerous advantages
Conclusion
Clearly, Cell phones are the most common communication device on the planet, and Short Message Service (SMS) is the chief channel for companies to offer services, accept requests, report news, and download files more cheaply and effectively.
More can be done to exploit the available simple technologies to improve service delivery especially in Africa.
