Last month HSL Mobile announced the upcoming release of their IM/SMS offering,
a messaging service that combines instant messaging (IM) with SMS to
give enterprises secure and far reaching messaging. This blog briefly
touches on the various means of messaging within enterprises and discusses the future of enterprise messaging with regards to IM/SMS.
Email for enterprise messaging
For
decades email has been the most popular method of communication
technology within organisations that was available on a computer or,
more recently, a mobile. It allows people to discuss, direct and distil
their work while optionally attaching documents and other files.
Brevity and immediacy is not what email is about and people can talk
at length if they so wish, press “send” when they’re done and then
their email will usually reach the recipient in under a minute or maybe longer if that email has large attachments.
SMS for enterprise messaging
Although
SMS has been around since 1992, its use in enterprise has only recently
started to gain momentum. SMS has a number of standout features:
- It is immediate.
- It can reach everyone who has a mobile.
- It’s more likely to get someone’s attention than an email.
- Depending on the alert tone used when a text message is received it can get the recipient’s attention as good as a voice call.
- It is normally available even in poor coverage and will work when Internet access doesn’t.
On
the negative side, compared to email and IM it is more expensive and,
while being largely immediate, it can sometimes be subject to delays.
SMS certainly does have its place in enterprises and can be used
from customer interaction to internal communication; however SMS is
limiting and can often be inappropriate to use. Consideration needs to
be given to cost, security, convenience and its effectiveness for a
particular communication purpose.
Instant messaging for enterprise messaging
Instant Messaging, otherwise known as IM, is
relatively new compared with SMS and email but its popularity is
exceeding that of SMS. Its success could well be down to it matching the
five attributes that Gartner believe next generation communication services will embrace:
- Symmetrical
- Personal/intimate
- Frequent
- Immediacy
- Acknowledgement.
IM is symmetrical
in that there is a one-to-one relationship in a conversation.
Personal/intimate means there’s a strong personal dimension to the
communication. It’s frequent in terms of how often the service is used.
And immediacy meaning it’s real-time or near real-time communication.
Finally, acknowledgement is about getting a message acknowledged, a factor that is important as conversations are real-time and contextual.
What is the future of enterprise messaging?
The
growth of IM is significant and is being widely used where email once
was. IM suits the more frequent “chatty” interactions than email and has
even replaced some face-to-face communication, as well as encouraging
communication where none may have previously taken place.
However, it is unlikely that email will be replaced by SMS as both email
and SMS are very much complimentary, something that is particularly the
case where smartphone usage is high. It remains to be seen how much
life SMS still has but it's a fact that the rate of growth of SMS has
been reducing and will inevitably at some point go into decline. It
should be noted though that while consumer use of SMS is reaching its peak, enterprise use of SMS is likely some way off from reaching its own peak. While this is happening IM's rate of growth is not likely to diminish at all.
So where does HSL Mobile's IM/SMS fit...?
It's a messaging system for use with your desktop, laptop, tablet and/or mobile offering a variety of ways for team members to connect and, as the "IM/SMS" name implies, it allows messaging via IM or SMS. The service can be accessed whether you have a smartphone switched on and even if you are not running the IM/SMS app.
In
terms of the team members who will be using IM/SMS, the focus is on the
act of messaging - sending and receiving messages - not unnecessarily
burdening them with the underlying technologies used to deliver their
messages or the poor network coverage they may be experiencing. The aim is to make it as simple as possible for team members using the system, allowing them to focus on the task at hand.
This
combination of instant messaging and SMS brings together the respective
benefits of IM and SMS in an enterprise messaging service and
additionally excels in terms of security, reliability and regulatory
compliance. We believe we've built a service that gives enterprises an
exceptionally robust and secure messaging service, engineered so it can
be depended on not only for regular chat between team members but for
critical business processes.
We also like to think of IM/SMS as innovative.
It's not only an enterprise messaging service for team members talking
with other team members, it also enables applications to talk with those
team members, customers and other external parties or even other
applications. However, we will not explore the very interesting opportunities this presents in this blog.
The IM/SMS messaging service is expected to encourage the use of SMS - where it is appropriate to be used -
and enable the switching of messaging away from SMS where IM is more
appropriate. It is also expected to help accelerate the adoption of IM
within enterprises and to replace existing IM systems that deliver
little benefit when compared with IM/SMS.
The benefits of this new innovative service for enterprise messaging are plentiful. Please get in touch to learn more or keep up to date with our developments by following us on any of our social media platforms listed below.
For further information regarding HSL Mobile, visit us at:
follow us on LinkedIn, @hslmobile, Facebook or Google+
or call us on +44 (0)1506 605 260
or email us at sales@hslmobile.com
