Well we fired up something pretty cool over the past months. Blast/bulk SMS/EMAIL Tender Alerts in a manner far far more powerful than ever before.
Before we did it off a Nokia / software interface which was slow and clunky. Now we have gone custom made back end with a Clickatell postman route. Did you know that 4 billion people worldwide use SMS?
I asked Timor Telcom to help out in 2008 and in 2009 but they never responded to my emails or letters. A shame really.
Why the above painful to look at spread sheet? Well it tells you that we sent 8,178 SMS/Email Tender Alerts between 4 November and 14 December 2010. Yes 8,178, and all for the shockingly amusing price of 1.6 cents per SMS.
Well I never really believe in any of this until I actually have evidence I can touch. So I had the Tender Team (Eduardo and Maria Teresa) hook me up to the system. Well what I discovered was that we had a few glitches, but within a few days we knocked it all into shape.
I am now receiving the same SMS/Email alerts that 3,000 plus businesses from Oecusse to Jaco, Tasi Mane to’o Tasi Feto are getting. Its quite something.
Imagine this
- Being a business in the rural Manufahi district on the south coast of Timor-Leste;
- Being verified by the Peace Dividend Marketplace Verification Team and getting a unique business profile on the Timor-Leste Business Portal; and
- Then you start getting SMS Tender Alerts from the Timor-Leste Business Portal Tender directory
Well you would likely wonder what the hell is going on, you call the number in the SMS and you are all of a sudden switched onto to business opportunities, come to Dili, bid on a contract, and win. And its done and dusted, the Marketplace project is driving money into the economy of rural Timor-Leste and creating jobs.
Funnily enough, this is a true story from just a number of weeks back – want the details? Just drop us a line. And to think, if it were not for a single SMS worth 1.6 cents the business in question would likely have never heard of the tender.
In the meantime here are a couple of snaps of what these alerts actually look like.
Just this afternoon we pushed the system a bit with a simple construction job, ADB public works tender. It went to 1,000 + plus businesses with the push of a button. Don’t believe me? Check out the evidence below.
Tags : SMS Tender Distribution Point
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