Nokia BookIT Brings Intelligent SMS User Manual
Fo ru m N ok ia P RO S uc ce ss S to ry
The Short Message Service (SMS) has quickly become a boon to the business world as well as to consumers,
but so far developers are only scratching the surface of its potential business usage. To more fully realize the
benefits of SMS, businesses must integrate it into their business processes, and into their existing IT systems.
When SMS is used as part of an overall business process that interacts with consumers, for example, then
the enterprise has moved from traditional SMS to intelligent SMS.
Intelligent SMS is differentiated from traditional SMS is these ways:
• The service application is typically a rich enterprise application with business process data, compared
to “lightweight” applications such as queries for traditional SMS.
• The transaction is “pushed” by the service application, compared to the mobile user “pull” method
of traditional SMS.
• Intelligent SMS is typically interactive between the service application and the user, whereas traditional
SMS is typically a one-way action.
• Intelligent SMS allows the user to respond to a message with a “one button” response, where traditional
SMS requires the keying in of a response message.
• Authentication of the user with the server application is embedded and automatic in intelligent SMS,
whereas traditional SMS may be based upon the mobile phone number, plus codes that must be entered
by the user.
A pioneering enabler of intelligent SMS applications is BookIT Oy of Helsinki, Finland. The company’s Dynamic
Dialog Matrix (DDM) technology has enabled enterprises in several market segments to improve their business
processes through customized implementations. These include applications in the airline and travel industries,
construction industries, and more recently, the healthcare industry. BookIT is a Nokia Networks business partner.
Intelligent SMS in the Healthcare Industry
There are hundreds of ways that intelligent SMS can be applied in a given business, and according to BookIT
president Jukka Salonen, the first step is in the analysis of the business processes themselves. “The process that
we undertook with a major dental center here in Finland, is a good example,” says Salonen. “First, we identified their business challenges. Then, we identified the bottlenecks in their present interaction with customers
and patients. We then revitalized these processes by building a new mobile channel to customers. Finally, we
introduced the new technology to enhance resource planning and patient management systems with intelligent
SMS and push capabilities.”
BookIT Brings Intelligent SMS
to Enterprise Applications
BookIT’s Dynamic Dialog Matrix enables intelligent SMS applications for business processes
Looking Ahead
Moving forward, Salonen sees BookIT’s
relationship with Forum Nokia PRO and
Nokia Networks as a growing one.
“As Nokia continues to introduce new
devices, we will make sure that they
work with our applications. When
S60 3rd Edition devices begin to hit the
market in 2006, for example, we will be
exploring the opportunities offered by
the new functionalities.”
BookI T Oy
HQ: H elsin ki, F inlan d
www.book it.fi
“The dental center estimates that it will
reduce its percentage of appointment
no-shows from 7 percent to 3 percent,
with an estimated saving of more than
36,000 euros per year.”
— Jukka Salonen, President, BookIT Oy
Fo ru m N ok ia P RO S uc ce ss S to ry
Continued
Scheduling Appointments
One result of this process was the creation of an intelligent-SMS based appointment scheduling process for one of
the dental centers. The new application sent interactive SMS messages out to customers to handle such tasks as:
• Reminding the customer of an appointment
• Allowing the customer to reschedule appointments
• Confirming an appointment
• Proposing an appointment opportunity based upon another customer’s cancellation
• Confirming a new appointment time
In each of these processes, the dental office system sends an intelligent SMS to the customer, and the customer
responds with a simple, one-button choice. The customer’s one-button response then activates the application’s
sending of an SMS back to the dental office.
A particularly useful part of this process is the ability to quickly reassign cancelled appointment times to other
customers. For the customer, there is the benefit of receiving an earlier appointment time, and for the dental
center, there is the benefit of quickly filling the hole in the dental calendar created by the original cancellation.
There is now the option of offering the newly-available appointment time to VIP customers fifteen minutes before making it available to other customers. “This dental center, which handles more than 10,000 appointments
per year, reduced its percentage of no-shows down from 7 percent to 3 percent,” says Salonen. “At an average
savings per no-show of about 90 euros, this presented them with an annual savings of more than 36,000 euros.”
In addition, the application lessened the demand for the resources needed in the dental center’s call centers. It
enabled them to manage peak demands in a more efficient fashion, and reduced the amount of manual work
and the total number of errors. It improved upon an older system that had long queues for scheduling appointments and lacked scheduled follow ups, recalls, or alerts for cancelled appointments.
“Forum Nokia PRO has introduced BookIT to global partners
like Accenture, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Proha Plc,
and Nokia Networks.”
Motiwell’s Application in Healthcare
This type of intelligent SMS application is clearly not limited to the dental field. Motiwell, a Finnish healthcare
company, has implemented the BookIT Intelligent SMS solution to monitor well-being of personnel at work
in organizations. The application is tailored to the individual needs of the personnel in the organization. The
application presents, for example, periodic questions about a user’s mood to those going through challenging
projects or a major restructuring of the organization. It also is configured to ask questions about conditions from
those working in potential environmental hazard areas. In so doing, the application maintains the one-button
response mechanism for ease of use.
“Typically it is a huge challenge for us to collect information from employees and patients participating in
healthcare surveys. It can take days or weeks and the response rate can still stay low,” says Matti Tiusanen, CEO at
Motiwell Oy. “With the BookIT Intelligent SMS solution we have obtained excellent results. In a recent case with
more than 500 participants, the response rate was 79 percent during the first day.”
“There are many opportunities for intelligent SMS in the healthcare industry, and they go way beyond appointments applications,” says Salonen. “There are applications in which people have chronic diseases and require
heavy communication and monitoring. There are applications in monitoring the side effects of new medications,
and in monitoring the success of treatment and quality of service that people receive.” These types of follow-on
applications also provide business opportunities for systems integrators and operators.
Developers interested in Forum Nokia PRO go to www.forum.nokia.com/pro.
Appointment proposal
Appointment reminder
Appointment confirmation
Nokia and BookIT
“Working with Forum Nokia PRO has been
very rewarding for BookIT,” says Salonen.
“The collaboration with Nokia has helped
BookIT in analyzing enterprise ROI cases
and expanded our business in international
markets by introducing us to global partners
like Accenture, Electronic Data Systems (EDS),
Proha Plc, and Nokia Networks.” He says that
Forum Nokia PRO has also invited BookIT to
invitation-only events such as the Amsterdam
Enterprise Summit in 2004.
“Forum Nokia PRO membership has also
given BookIT access to new Series 40, S60
and Series 80 prototype handsets that are
not available to ordinary developers,” says
Salonen. This has allowed BookIT to develop
new software that takes advantage of the
new advanced features of new and future
Nokia Phones as they appear.
Copyright © 2005 Nokia Corporation. All rights reserved. FP11005
www.nokia.com/developer
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