2011 floods in Queensland and Victoria saw Suncorp once again use SMS as an effective means to communicate with its customers.

Suncorp’s first use of SMS occurred in the 2010 natural disasters in Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and Tornado affected regions around Lennox Head in New South Wales which had placed increased pressure on insurance companies to process claims quickly and effectively. For the biggest general insurer, Suncorp, the increase in claims highlighted the need to keep clients better informed on the progress of their claims.

For many victims of the storms and floods there was no internet connection let alone a computer, paperwork was all too often lost or destroyed and mail had major disruptions in most regions.

The scale of the Queensland floods in 2011 required increased capacity of Suncorp’s SMS messaging systems to handle not only insurance but banking related communications. The SMS system designed by an Australian company, Better Network Services Group (BNS Group), was quickly scaled up to meet the increased demands to reach hundreds of thousands of flood affected customers in a very short period of time.

BNS Group and SMS provider SMS Global worked together to rapidly meet the increased capacity needs of Suncorp’s SMS messaging services.
BNS’s msXsms Enterprise solution won the 2010 Australian Information Industry Association’s ACT state iAward for the best in Communications category sponsored by ZD Net Australia.

“BNS was delighted to assist Suncorp’s Enterprise Services Wintel and Collaboration team deliver increased SMS messaging capacity during the floods. The team at Suncorp worked tirelessly over a few days and into the weekend, sending up to 18,500 SMS messages every hour to their customers. With SMS Global’s service and our msXsms Enterprise software we can scale well beyond those volumes if required” said Laurence Buchanan, Director Sales & Marketing BNS Group.

msXsms Enterprise can be used for 2 way SMS communications from any business application with significant data and audit controls provided by the solution.
msXsms Enterprise now implements security requirements for Government departments and agencies allowing controlled classification of SMS messaging to public SMS networks.

“Our SMS technology can be used for any corporate or Government business systems not just banking and insurance companies. The technology also provides protective marking compliance for Australian Government, so the applications for SMS in government are huge” said Buchanan.

BNS Group and SMS Global Deliver increased SMS capacity during floods for Suncorp msXsms Enterprise software works with Microsoft Windows 2008R2 and SQL 2008R2 technologies providing Microsoft customers: scalable solutions, message tracking, audit, and compliance reporting.

Better Network Services (BNS) Group is a privately owned Australian company based in Sydney and Canberra. Microsoft Certified ISV Partners for over 17 years, BNS has focused on the design and manufacture of commercial software products for secure Fax and secure SMS messaging solutions. BNS’s niche is adherence to security standards and controls required by Australian Government Information Security Manual also known as ACSI33. SMSGlobal are a 100% Australian, privately-owned company and have grown to become Australia’s leading internet SMS communication platform provider. With direct SMSC connections to Australian mobile carriers and to more than 340 international providers, SMSGlobal offer unsurpassed service and quality to over 25,000 SME.s, corporate, local, state and federal government departments and charitable trusts. SMSGlobal is dedicated to the provision of first class products and services, reflected in their ability to offer world class service level agreements and highly competitive pricing