SMS Gateways

These are simple-to-use systems usually allowing SMS messages to be sent via your email client. Cheap and simple, they can be a good starting point to test SMS communication with your tenants. Functionality of Gateways is generally limited, perhaps offering generic Survey features at additional cost.

Integration with Housing Management applications is limited and communication requires manual intervention at every stage, negating the primary potential benefits of SMS.

The low cost SMS Gateways are often provided cheaply as a route to sell SMS messages and consequently, they often have restrictions on moving the mobile number your tenants will use to contact you. It is worth checking number portability before investing in marketing your SMS numbers.

SMS Platforms

Deeplake Communications Manager (CMGR) is a configurable platform solution offering sophisticated data integration with a full workflow engine. This allows fully automated commuications to be carried out such as Letter 1 Rent Reminders and Repairs Reminders automatically merging HMS data into the outgoing message, accepting a range of defined replies, and only alerting the Contact Centre when certain conditions apply.

In addition, the "HMS data mail merge" functions allow multi-lingual messages to be sent and recieved automatically.

Integrated SMS Functionality

The last category of SMS solutions are where specific SMS communications are integrated within a business application such an an HMS or DLO's database.

These have the advantage of tight integration and shared data as above and can work well. The disadvantage is that once several systems make use of SMS, then a lack of control and standardisation takes place.

Different departments begin offering different reply SMS numbers to Tenants causing confusion and potentially system failure. There is also the issue of mutlple SMS billing, no co-ordinated SMS frequency or format policy, and mobile numbers needing to be maintained in multiple databases.