Smartlogic Improves Efficiency, Cuts Costs With Palringo's Enterprise Group Messaging and Presence Platform

MENLO PARK, Calif., Dec. 13, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Smartlogic, a global software and services company that delivers semantic search capabilities to large enterprise customers worldwide, has improved team communication through the use of Palringo's Enterprise Instant Messaging Platform.  By leveraging the power of Palringo's business-class solution for daily company-wide project updates and for ad-hoc information and support requests, the company has reduced both the amount of time spent coordinating and conducting meetings, and the telecom costs associated with conference calls among dispersed teams.

Palringo Enterprise is a dedicated, device- and network-independent service that allows teams to collaborate, communicate and share media regardless of location.  It supports P2P and group messaging, handling workgroups of thousands of members and can be used from any handheld device or desktop, requiring only a data connection to work.  Users can send text, voice or picture messages to individuals and groups, which can result in significant telecommunications cost savings.  In some cases, enterprise customers have reported savings exceeding 50 percent.  

The Challenge

Smartlogic provides software, consulting and integration services to large, multinational organizations who wish to improve their enterprise search capabilities.  At any given time, the company has more than 30 project teams, each with members in as many as seven different locations, working on client engagements.  With dispersed teams working on mission-critical projects, the company employs the "Scrum" method, which requires a daily team update meeting, to ensure projects are on-track.  

Coordinating the logistics for these daily meetings – and managing the flow of information from dispersed team members – was becoming impractical, expensive and time-consuming.  The company began searching for a solution that would make it easy for everyone to join the meeting, reduce the time spent on conference calls and away from client work, and provide a searchable knowledge base of information that would benefit the entire team both during and after the daily update.

The Solution

Smartlogic began using Palringo's Instant Enterprise Messaging Platform to replace the costly, hours-long conference calls that used to serve as teams' daily update.  Using Palringo, dispersed team members join a scheduled daily group chat via their mobile devices.  Team members send immediate text, picture and voice messages to the group to facilitate interactive discussions for daily update briefings, regardless of their location.  This makes it easier to schedule and conduct the meetings – and provides a searchable record of the meeting for later reference, or for absent team members to review.

The Results

Smartlogic has reduced the length of an average daily update from a few hours to about 15 minutes, resulting in faster project delivery times, as its professionals are now spending less time on conference calls and more time on client engagements.  The company has also reduced its reliance on international conference call services and is able to keep a record of all team update meetings in an easily searchable digital format.  

Smartlogic has also improved problem solving on an ad-hoc basis.  When teams encounter a challenge or problem on-site with a client, in a meeting or during a conference call, they can leverage Palringo's presence and messaging capabilities to identify available colleagues, share information, and obtain immediate answers and ideas.  This ability to solve issues as they arise has resulted in improved project completion times and increased client satisfaction.  It also reflects well on the company, as team members are able to provide quick solutions and showcase the caliber of the global team and the organization as a whole.  

"The success of our projects, and our reputation as a company, revolves around our ability to deliver," said Matthieu Jonglez, CTO of Smartlogic.  "Palringo's platform makes it easier for teams to collaborate, both on scheduled daily team status calls and as issues arise.  And we are left with a searchable record of each conversation.  Because of the instant nature of Palringo-enabled communications and the versatility of information-sharing methods, we have improved our internal processes tremendously, resulting in an improved project experience for our clients."

How Does it Work?

Palringo has developed its own end-to-end telco-grade IM network with a proprietary protocol designed specifically to enable rich communications on any mobile device.  The Palringo client works on all major mobile OSes and, should connectivity to third-party services be required, is able to connect to popular IM services such as AIM, Yahoo!, ICQ, Microsoft Messenger and Facebook Chat, and enterprise messaging services.

Using the core Palringo service as a platform allows enterprise users to extend the usual IM text experience to enable:

• Voice:  A flexible form of push-to-talk messaging that allows users to use their phones like walkie-talkies
• Pictures:  Palringo makes it easy to snap a picture on the phone, or select a picture from the on-device album, and drop it into an on-going discussion with an individual or within a group.  In a business setting, field engineers can send images of particularly difficult faults to colleagues for comment, or colleagues can share photos from a tradeshow or industry event
• Groups:  Palringo's group function is flexible and scalable and can easily accommodate hundreds of individuals within a group
• Location:  Palringo offers a rich location/presence functionality that adds an additional level of communication in an enterprise setting.  The location functionality is flexible in terms of end-user privacy control options, but for enterprise solutions can also be configured in always-on mode
• History & Archival: Unlike competitors, Palringo's emphasis on a robust server-side platform allows the company to offer a full history of conversations accessible via the Palringo clients, via an individual user's account page on the web or via an admin control panel for enterprise users.  This is particularly important for regulated industries or other environments where the ability to archive IM and text conversations is important or even mandated

Enterprise Benefits

Productivity:  An always-on connection improves teams' ability to coordinate and communicate, leading to higher levels of efficiency

Instant Answers:  Establishing team chat within an enterprise makes it easy for staff to raise issues and generate an immediate response; support is always easily accessible

Coordination:  Rich presence, innovative group communications and the ability to maintain many separate discussions makes it easy to coordinate activities

Reduced Telecom Expenditures:  Customer studies show considerable cost savings with substantially reduced call costs and noticeable improvements in overall efficiency

About Smartlogic

Smartlogic is a software and services company that specializes in adding semantic search capabilities to any system that requires it. Smartlogic Semaphore is an enterprise semantic platform which uniquely captures an organization's subjects and topics into a model (taxonomy or ontology), in a manner that adds context for enhanced findability.  Our consultants deliver the software and provide considerable experience in the areas of information architecture, enterprise search and information management.

Smartlogic Semaphore Ltd has a long history in Enterprise Search, Natural Language Processing and information management applications. The company was founded on the idea of using controlled vocabularies such as taxonomies and ontologies to drive automatic classification of information as well as search navigation.

Smartlogic has operations based in the USA and UK which provide semantic search software and services to clients across Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.  For more information, please visit: www.smartlogic.com

About Palringo

Founded in 2006, the UK and San Francisco-based Palringo has built a new type of mobile communication solution that takes the PC-based instant messaging experience and makes it uniquely mobile.  With more than five million users sending tens of billions of messages monthly, the company has built a hardened, scalable system that delivers a compelling user experience to the consumer and a valuable communications tool to the enterprise.  For more information, visit www.palringo.com

SOURCE Palringo