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Cuyahoga Falls business leads way
By Paula Schleis
Beacon Journal business writer
Published on Monday, Jan 05, 2009
Cell phones and land lines aren't designed to handle that many phone calls at once. Sirens and alarms alert only people in the immediate vicinity. Radio and TV can warn only folks who are tuned in.
But Dettling figured most people had something in their pocket that would work far more quickly and reliably.
For the past two years, the company he founded — Inspiron Logistics — has been selling a system that can send emergency notification via text messaging.
The Summit County Sheriff's Department, the cities of Cuyahoga Falls and Fairlawn, and the University of Akron are among local users of Inspiron's Wireless Emergency Notification System (WENS).
WENS was born of an era marked by tragedies that accentuated the need for better emergency communication, from the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, to the Virginia Tech shootings and the Minnesota bridge collapse.
Now Inspiron is marketing its system to a whole new audience: companies looking for fast and convenient ways to interact with employees and customers.
And Dettling expects his staff of 10 will double or triple in 2009 to handle demand for the new service, called Stratus Mobile.
WENS
Dettling, a Firestone High School and University of Akron graduate who came home to launch his company, said text messaging is the most reliable way to reach the greatest number of people in the shortest amount of time.
An electrical outage can knock out power to cordless phones. And phone carriers weren't designed to handle great volumes of calls at once.
WENS works because the technology is simple, Dettling said.
''A text message is a small file and it will get through when voice calls don't,'' he said.
It also works because text messaging is becoming ubiquitous. Recent studies show Americans are text messaging more frequently than placing phone calls or sending e-mail.
Dettling said he stresses to clients that WENS should be used only for emergencies, such as the way UA used it last year to stay in touch with students during a string of bomb threats.
''You don't want the system to be overused for sports scores or pep rallies or things like that because you'll become desensitized to it,'' Dettling said. ''When you get a message, you want to know this is special.''
Even if the audience is much smaller and there is no power issue, WENS has distinct advantages, users said.
''We can assemble a team much faster using the WENS,'' said Sharon McMurray, assistant director of administration for the Summit County sheriff.
In a recent case involving an overturned tanker, the WENS alerted a hazardous materials unit within seconds and directed its members to a staging area.
Before, the department would have used a modem to dial up individual pagers, McMurray said.
Learning to make WENS ''extremely reliable'' was a two-year process that Dettling called ''tumultuous.''
''It's not difficult for a company to set up a system and send out 50 text messages. Sending out 100,000 in a matter of minutes is a completely different scenario,'' he said.
''There's no room for downtime. If a client needs to use the system, chances are, lives could be at stake.''
But perfecting WENS ''made us the authority on mass notification via text messaging,'' he said, and that led to the company's latest enterprise.
Stratus Mobile
As Inspiron developed a national reputation, calls began coming in from companies that had an interest in text interactions, but without life or death implications.
When they began asking whether they could buy Inspiron's platform for their own uses, Dettling saw some new doors opening.
''It was battle-tested, proven technology, so they said, 'Why should we try to come up with our own when you've already done it?' '' he said.
Marketing the system under the name Stratus Mobile, ''we provide the ability to organize and index a massive amount of people,'' Dettling said.
That could be banks that want customers to be able to text in for their balances; credit-card companies that can notify customers each time a charge is applied; or online auction houses that want buyers to know they've been outbid.
SparkBase, the Cleveland gift-card company, subscribed to Stratus Mobile so 2 million gift card holders can keep track of their spending power while allowing merchants to promote special offers.
Another recent customer is a staffing company that wants clients to know about immediate job openings.
And in this economy, some clients have been motivated to turn it into a ''revenue generator,'' Dettling said, charging a premium for their clients to access the system.
Business model
Inspiron charges clients an annual fee to use the server, but users have complete control over when or how to use their database.
And they can operate the entire system from an authorized cell phone, he said.
That came in handy last year, when Florida had massive power outages. Inspiron has dozens of customers in the state, including Miami-Dade County.
''I always worry that administrators aren't paying attention in training on how to remotely trigger these systems when the power is out and your computer and the Internet aren't working, but most initiated alerts right from their cell phones and it worked flawlessly,'' Dettling said.
Those are the kinds of successes that Inspiron investors like to see.
One year ago, JumpStart, a nonprofit business development group that invests in young and promising Northeast Ohio companies, committed $400,000 to Inspiron.
Lynn-Ann Gries, chief investment officer of JumpStart, said there's no denying that Inspiron's market is hot.
''Everyone focused on SMS text messaging solutions because of Virginia Tech and continued terrorism issues, and communities want that kind of solution,'' she said, ''so we definitely thought he was in a market space that was growing.''
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com.
Get the full article here.
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Posted 05:12 AM, 01/06/2009
tallmadge uses this technology, as of a few months ago.
