iTouch
iTouch works more in the corporate sector than many of the other sites listed here. The brand name for these services is Business Mobility Solutions.
The first step up the solutions ladder is Corporate SMS. This is divided into three different applications, depending on your business needs.
- WebSMS delivers bulk or individual SMS via a Web browser.
- EmailSMS is an e-mail to SMS gateway.
- FtpSMS uses File Transfer Protocol to send an SMS message to a large number of mobile phones. It is ideal for those who want to send a message to hundreds or thousands of recipients simultaneously.
As an example of how this service can be used, IBM in South Africa has set up a system that uses Corporate SMS to alert engineers of faults on their servers and send pricing information to sales staff on the road.
The second step is WAP, which allows access to a company's backend database (within the WAP limitations) to collect up-to-the-minute information.
The third step is a range of field to office data integration packages known as iSell, iService, and iDeliver. These PDA-based solutions make the back office more available to sales and service people in the field. The aim is to reduce paperwork and possible errors that can occur when information must be entered and re-entered. The solutions make it possible to track billable and non-billable time and make that information available in real-time (or close to it).
iSell is a sales and CRM (Customer Resource Management) solution that allows staff to process orders at the customer's site. The system is being used by Kapiti Cheese, whose sales staff can now deal with orders at the customer's site, instead of calling it through later. And customer service personnel no longer have to re-enter the order back at the office.
iService is a dispatch and management solution that allows a company to track job progress through their service engineers in real time. This allows simpler maintenance of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), better tracking of work in progress, and reductions in paperwork.
iDeliver is a freight and courier solution for real-time job tracking and improved customer service. It allows easy collection of data, sent back to the be stored at the home office for later retrieval either from the office or out on the road.
iTouch has developed over 50 custom solutions for other types of mobile system requirements. One example is a Palm application that is used to collect statistics during rugby matches for reporting to a central database. The application enables the selection of teams and players, and it records the venue, weather, field, and crowd conditions. It also tracks substitutions, scores and injuries.
On the consumer side, iTouch also features a link to the Big Brother site, from which they provide SMS updates on what is happening in the Big Brother House.
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