Event recap: MEF The Changing Dynamics In Business Messaging

(Original version published on the Mobile Ecosystem Forum blog, August 2021)

The Mobile Ecosystem Forum webinar "The Changing Dynamics in Business Messaging" took place on the 22nd of July 2021 and our Senior Partnerships Account Director Noa Bar Shay was invited as a speaker to discuss how the business messaging landscape continues to evolve.

From MEF Director of Programmes James Williams:

Rakuten Viber was the first chat app out of the gate with a business messaging proposition and is also very busy in the areas of SMS and voice and here’s what Noa Bar-Shay had to say: “The Messaging Ecosystem has already made a huge step forward in its development. Business messages have played an important role in this evolution and continue developing the industry.

Despite this, we are all still in a process of self-improvement, the big value being that all the industry players can learn from each other and therefore make the ecosystem bigger and stronger. External circumstances also play a significant role in the evolution of the Messaging Ecosystem. E.g., the pandemic has accelerated the industry to a much higher degree than anyone would have expected – progress that would normally take five or six years was achieved in just five to six months.

Since it works anywhere and everywhere without the need for internet access, SMS technology will keep its important position in the Messaging Ecosystem, however, messaging apps will continue taking over the market share. Especially with the constant growth of conversational commerce since chat apps provide a native environment for rich communication between users and brands. Together with other industry technologies, SMS has to move to transformation in order to be up to date and meet customers and business needs”.

So, there we have it from a chat app company – SMS is a long way from being dead when it comes to Business Messaging!

The variety of speakers gave some great perspective and coming from Nadir Patel who has a lot on his plate at Omantel was: “We all agree that the messaging ecosystem players have made efforts thus far, there is no doubt that there is a lot to work to be done on in order to for us to meet the enterprise customer requirements and expectations. Stakeholders need to collaborate and cooperate right from the MNOs, platform providers, aggregators, security experts, and last but not the least, the Regulatory bodies.”

You can watch the Viber highlights here: