Thursday, October 18, 2012

SMS – The last mile of Enterprise ERP

Businesses invest a lot of time, money and resource into automating their processes with the goals of cost efficiency, customer service excellence and operational effectiveness. 

It is surprising therefore that all too often the last mile of the ERP process, the communication to a person, is left to email, voicemail or an old fashioned phone call. This is where SMS adds value far beyond it’s cost. 

Let me explain! 


Your ERP system has recognised that stock is low of a specific product, and that deliveries of product to distribution points are at risk. The system auto-generates a new order, but sign off is required. How does the mobile authoriser learn about the need to perform this task? By Email? By logging onto the ERP system from their hotel room or while on the train? 

The better answer, and the answer that accelerates responses to ‘calls to action’, is SMS. 

SMS is delivered faster than email, is read in priority to email, and triggers people to respond, act, solve, confirm, or in short, get the job done. 

Integrating SMS into ERP is a relatively simple process. Most ERP systems, most CRM platforms and most portal technologies connect to XML based web services. From there, plumbing in a SMS connection is a simple process. 

2sms has worked with many customers who have made this discovery. The record in terms of a customer grabbing our API from our web site and sending their first SMS message from their test platform, was a major bank. And these days, their core product systems are monitored by software that connects to SMS when problems are detected.