Skymobile Limited, a Malawian mobile information company, has come up with a new short message service (SMS) broadcast innovation that will enable institutions to send a single message to numerous clients to sell their products.
The innovation will also enable companies to just alert people about their activities.
Skymobile Limited chief executive officer Billy Chiontha in an interview said the new product is targeting institutions such as churches, schools and all communication conscious establishments eager to frequently communicate with their numerous clients.
The company has, of late, been showcasing the broadcast innovation, which was launched in November 2012, to various churches and schools across the country.
Chiontha said the SMS Mobile General Notification System (MGNS) is vital for communication needs of institutions such as churches and schools.
MGNS uses a customised interface to send a single message to multiple recipients through mobile phones at once.
“We felt that this is time that the church should use various technological innovations as a means of wooing followers into its fold instead of just watching others benefitting from the same,” he said.
Chiontha said it was unfortunate that while several sectors are benefitting from communication technologies to penetrate the market, churches were just watching the trend and in the end losing out in their efforts to win new souls.
“This product is a customised one, users are at liberty to manage their own interface whereby they will be able to send the messages using their own system or they can be hooked to Skymobile which can send the messages on their behalf,” he added.
According to Chiontha, the system uses both Airtel and TNM networks.
Chiontha said all notifications are branded in the name of the client to mitigate cases of fraudulent messages or recipients deleting them before reading.
He said among the many benefits of the system is that churches will be able to increase membership retention as it would be constantly be in touch with the members.
“This product is useful mostly in these days of economical challenges when winning new souls and membership retention is much harder. The system will also help members to feel that they are part of the church all the time,” said Chiontha.
The MGNS is the third of such communication systems product from Skymobile.
Recently, the company, wholly owned by Malawians, also launched a Jobs on Mobile, a product that assist job seekers as well as employers to make their needs known through SMS broadcast, and Property on Mobile to assist the real estate sector.
