Today’s crisis response, whether it be cyber, social or active aggressor inflicted, requires the ability to communicate with your stakeholder base, en-mass, instantaneously. This need elevates considerably in a landscape when you need to guide people from harms way. Most organisations recognise this and have some type of mass telecommunications system in place, some are looking at upgrading their existing one and others are considering adopting one.
With that said, there have been major advances in mass messaging technology and plenty of innovative products on the market, but organisations should be looking out for two key elements.
1. SMS THROUGHPUT
That is the number of messages your provider can send per second. For an organisation with tens of thousands of people to reach in a crisis – a high SMS throughput is crucial.
2. GATEWAYS
The ability to remove critical reliance on one of the telecommunications providers for delivery of SMS.
FIRSTLY – WHAT IS A GOOD SMS THROUGHPUT?
Simply put, the higher the SMS throughput, the better. This translates to more time-critical messages being sent in a timely manner.
Catalyst Technologies recently conducted a mass SMS test for a major university using the CQ communications module of CQCommand. The crisis management tool successfully deployed messages to a total of 68,867 recipients in under 4 minutes at a 98.02% success rate. In throughput measurement, the sms throughput was 292 messages per second. This test instilled confidence in the university that in the event of a crisis or incident, they could quickly reach their entire network to make sure everyone is safe.
SECONDLY – HOW DO WE ENSURE WE’RE NOT RELIANT ON ONE TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROVIDER?
Despite best endeavours, all telecommunication providers experience downtime, and in city wide crisis events can also experience backlogs due to unanticipated heavy SMS traffic. In selecting a mass communications platform, it is critical to understand the infrastructure on which it relies upon to deliver messages from platform to end users.
In particular, it’s important to identify if a gateway is being leveraged to ensure that critical failure points are covered and you’re not relying on a single telecommunications service provider. This approach mitigates the exposure to non-delivery at your most critical moment.
DO YOUR RESEARCH
Mass messaging systems are constantly evolving and what works for one organisation may not be suitable for yours. Before choosing a mass messaging platform, try a demo and request a test before making a purchasing decision.
Remember that in the event of a crisis or incident, it is critical to have the ability to reach people anywhere, at any time, to ensure their safety.
To coordinate a speed test for your organisation via CQCommand, please register your details below.
Marcus Vaughan | Chief Growth Officer
Catalyst Technologies
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