GiveMe sponsors 6th Philippine Web Awards
by Ronald Panis, CW Special Projects Writer;



August 25, 2003

Taken from http://www.itnetcentral.com/article.asp?id=12034&icontent=14944

PREMIUM products need prominent channels to broaden their market reach. So believes Erick S. Kalugdan, president and chief executive officer of wireless and enterprise solutions provider GiveMe Unlimited Inc., which is why the software development company recently signed up with the 6th Philippine Web Awards (PWA) as one of the first platinum sponsors of the prestigious event that annually honors the best Filipino Web developers and designers. Through the Philippine Web Awards organized by Media G8way Corporation (formerly WS Computer Publishing Corporation), GiveMe hopes to showcase its latest offering – the access software InfoTXT Messaging Platform.

“Being one of the milestones in (local) IT, the PWA has become a prestigious event that is worth sponsoring and worth joining as it will be good for our company as well,” said Kalugdan, who followed the advice of his clients to seek an effective way of showing customers the many advantages of InfoTXT.

“We believe that PWA will be a great channel for informing everybody, including CIOs and CEOs, about our product,” he said. He added that being part of the event places the company in a “win-win situation” as GiveMe will be able to promote the Philippine Web Awards using InfoTXT to send announcements and/or reminders, among other information, and, in the process, giving the product, the company and PWA additional “mileage.”

Launched in December 2002, the InfoTXT Messaging Platform seeks to develop a cost-effective and easy-to-use SMS solution for businesses, said Kalugdan. It works by converging SMS-capable cellular phones and personal computers. It allows companies to send and receive text messages to many different numbers using the PC.

InfoTXT also allows the retrieval of data by a company-member or employee from the company’s database. This two-way capability of the software, which Kalugdan refers to as SMS Push and Pull (with “Push” for the group texts and “Pull” for its data gathering feature), can be set to automatic receive (or auto-reply) and can be customized to address specific requirements.

By simply inputting the message into the software, a company can regularly send and receive high-volume SMS messages and access valuable information, such as product inventory, product prices, news, contact information, etc., wirelessly.

Its interface is also easy to understand. Kalugdan said it has an inbox, outbox, message folders, and templates. Thus, if one knows how to use a Yahoo! mail, for instance, one can easily learn how to use InfoTXT.

“InfoTXT is very simple and efficient,” he said. “Its user interface is designed to be user-friendly, giving it a zero learning curve. It has very minimal system requirements; all you need is an ordinary desktop computer – even like a Pentium II running on Windows 95. There is no requirement for a server PC or a need for an Internet connection (unless the data to be sent has to be acquired from the Net). Just use a GSM, SIM card, and you can have the SMS Service.”

VERSIONS

The software has three versions namely, the InfoTXT Basic, InfoTXT Advanced and InfoTXT WebDb. The Basic version, a GSM modem and SIM-based software, allows a company to send and receive SMS via PC. It can conduct “TXT Broadcasting,” the term for texting the whole list of numbers available in a company’s phonebook that can be accessed by multiple-users over an intranet or the Internet. It eliminates the procedure followed by customer service representatives who read received SMS messages that they share with their company’s database to send SMS reply messages to their contacts. “There is the effort of coming up with (a) database of numbers,” said Kalugdan, referring to corporations.

InfoTXT Advanced is InfoTXT Basic but has the added capability to obtain automatically needed company data by just typing in keywords. The process, tagged as the Info On Demand solution, relies on the SMS keyword/s sent by the requesting cell phone user. When the computer recognizes the keyword/s, it gets the requested information (varying from product inventory or prices, to directory, system status and corporate data) from the built-in database, and sends the data to the user. The process, which can be done anytime, anywhere, can be finished in less than 10 seconds.

The InfoTXT Advanced capabilities might seem like a search engine, said Kalugdan, “but it is more of an index machine” where data seekers could easily thumb through the information available to a company. It also has a mechanism that can determine and authenticate the identity of the requesting party seeking data access.

WebDB speeds up the accessibility of data by allowing the user easier entry to an external database, Web site, or Web application (running Linux, Windows, etc.) or ODBC-compliant databases (MS Access, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.) through an intranet or the Internet. This version is appropriate for cross-platform SMS service, programmers, Web developers, and database administrators. Kalugdan said 90% of the company’s customers prefer this version because of its flexibility. “It has unlimited possibilities, (making it) the best choice,” he added.

Both IT and non-IT companies can employ InfoTXT for a number of business applications. Kalugdan said it could be used to answer general inquiries, announce events, new offerings or holidays, post changes in procedures or requirements, spread the availability of new jobs, gather feedback on certain promos or products, take orders of dealers or distributors nationwide, alert customers of remote administrations in case of power disruptions or temporary service disconnection, and even track shipments anywhere in the world.

Publishing companies such as Media G8way can benefit from the product. Kalugdan explained that a publishing firm could use InfoTXT to inform readers what their latest issues contain or what headlines they carry to entice readers to buy the publication or visit the Web site. “More visits or more readers will mean more sponsors and advertisers,” he said.

CLIENTS

“This is an alternative to memos, flyers with its printer, mailing and paper costs, faxes which are equivalent to long distance calls, and landline to cell phone calls,” he said. He noted that by using text messages, a company’s usual process of informing members and retrieving data becomes cheaper. Hence, it generates best value for money in terms of total cost of ownership and operating expenditures.

One of the many clients of GiveMe is the Center for International Trade Exposition and Mission (CITEM) which uses InfoTXT for its trade fairs, exhibits, food expositions and other shows. “CITEM uses the system to alert trade exhibitors about ingress schedules, egress schedules, billing information, and other reminders,” said Kalugdan.

A few days after the failed mutiny in Makati City, the Hotel Inter-Continental Manila used InfoTXT to notify its customers that its operations are back to normal. The hotel also plans to use the software for announcements of events or promotions and for room reservations.

Like the Hotel Inter-Continental, Tagaytay Highlands announces events and weather condition reports (for its golf tournaments) to its members through InfoTXT. “They used to insert flyers in the billing statements of their members to announce events. The response rate was only 3%. After InfoTXT, the response rate went up to more than 40%,” Kalugdan said.

But the biggest InfoTXT clients would probably be the country’s more than 17 million cell phone users, said Kalugdan whose firm has forged a partnership with Smart and Globe. Globe currently has 8,071,025 subscribers, while Smart has 9,368,513 users. Also, 80% of employees in local companies use cell phones, 99% of which are SMS-capable.