A Reliable and Economical Alert and Notification System for Small and Medium Sized Organizations and Businesses

Executive Summary

Many businesses and other organizations require a means of alerting or notifying individuals or groups in various situations. While many of today’s sophisticated technologies can meet a wide variety of requirements, many times they are overly complicated, expensive and not suitable for audit or record keeping. This paper describes how Email2Phone, an Internet based email to phone service can be configured and utilized to meet the specific needs of small and medium sized businesses and other organizations that require notification or alert capabilities.

When is the Furniture Coming?

A furniture store notifies customers when a delivery is scheduled, a school principal notifies his teaching staff of dangerous weather conditions, a charter airline alerts crew members at home of a flight delay and a baseball coach alerts team members when a practice is postponed. For many businesses and organizations their profitability or success rests on how well they are able to control or perform these tasks. Requirements for alerting and notifying customers, employees, team members, etc. vary widely as to urgency, the degree of automation and sophistication. Extensive and complex requirements usually dictate an investment in expensive custom solutions, specialized communication equipment, training and committing personnel resources. However, businesses with modest requirements can take advantage of an existing Internet based service that requires no investment, yet is economical and reliable.

A Practical Solution

Subscribing to Email2Phone service provides all of the basic capabilities necessary for many businesses or organizations to economically and reliably alert or notify customers, members and employees. Email2Phone is an Internet service that converts ordinary text emails into phone voice messages that can be delivered to any phone or phones or retrieved by dialing into Email2Phone. It also provides the user with the capability to access messages and configure their account online. Using Email2Phone for alerts and notification applications is simple in that all that is required is for an email to be generated and sent to the user’s Email2Phone email address. The email is then converted to voice and a call or calls are placed to the recipients. The recipient in turn has all of the key options of phone voice mail plus the capability to reply to the voice message. The reply function generates a return email to the sender with a link to the recipient’s voice message.

Users are able to configure features of email2phone.net to meet a variety of specific requirements. For instance, a user can select email voice messages to be delivered to single or multiple phones, and with multiple phone numbers calls can be dialed sequentially or simultaneously. In most situations, businesses and organizations need to target Email2Phone’s email voice messages to specific individuals or groups. In order to utilize this feature, keywords are encoded into the subject or body of the message. The Email2Phone multi-level filter feature detects the keywords and directs the email voice message to the proper recipient(s).

Unlike texting or manual phone calling, Email2Phone users can easily select, modify, reuse and build information into time saving pre-formatted emails. For the record, a complete message history is available online enabling easy organization and audit of all message activity.

The economics of Email2Phone are based on a low monthly service charge that includes a substantial number of phone credits. Monthly calls beyond the allowable phone credits incur a minimal charge.

Email2Phone not only can satisfy basic notification and alert needs, but also possesses the following attributes:

• easy to set up
• user friendly
• maintenance free
• instantaneous
• free trial

Getting Ready for the Cement Truck

Martin, Inc. a regional ready-mix concrete supplier works with approximately twenty-five cement contractors to deliver ready-mixed concrete products to a variety of construction sites in a mid-sized metropolitan area. A significant success factor for this business includes the capability to provide accurate estimated delivery times to their contractors, which in turn equates to how much time a delivery truck spends on a construction site. Accurate delivery times mean better planning for the availability of personnel to pour concrete and better site preparation by the contractor.

Martin, Inc. has made arrangements with their contractors so that the contactor will receive a voice message with the estimated delivery time, usually within thirty to sixty minutes of the actual delivery. The calls are a product of Email2Phone service, which Martin, Inc. has adapted to their notification process. As the orders are filled and the trucks are dispatched from the cement plant, a Martin employee simply enters an estimated delivery time into a preformatted email that has been encoded with the contractors I.D. The email is then sent to Email2Phone, converted from text to voice and phone call containing the voice message is placed to the contractor. If the contractor is not available to answer the phone, Email2Phone will either leave a voice mail message if the phone is voice mail enabled or continue to call the contractor back at intervals of 5, 15, 30 and 60 minutes.

Not only is Email2Phone easy for Martin employees to use, it is practically maintenance free except for adding or deleting contractor phone numbers. If necessary, messages in text format and all message activity can be audited or reviewed by Martin employees by simply logging on to Email2Phone and accessing the message history files.

Wrapping It Up

Today’s Internet business services can provide tools to help small and medium sized businesses and organizations efficiently and economically communicate with customers, employees and members. Some of the attributes that make these services attractive are easy of set-up, ease of use, maintenance free, auditable, reliable and affordable. Taking advantage of these services without having to make a major investment or having to commit resources to development is an enormous benefit to business.