There are a quickly growing number of messaging applications out there, most of which cater to the personal user. There are private messaging apps and secure messaging apps that keep all of your messages between you and the recipient and away from prying eyes. There are apps that focus on fun ways to communicate. But there are very few apps that are specifically made for the enterprise outside of Skype for Business.
Then there’s Teamchat, an application that is built from the ground up specifically for the professional user. I recently had the opportunity to interview Teamchat CEO Beerud Sheth regarding his application and was able to gain some insight on both the focus of the app and the app’s future in the vast messaging space.
Teamchat is what Beerud refers to as a “smart messenger.” It not only includes the basic messaging features that you’d expect, but it also includes aggregated data, so if you are looking for feedback in the workplace on a new policy or procedure, you can put out a poll and actually receive useful results within the app. In addition, you can look forward to features like sales tracking, forms, location and other structured data, all of which can be aggregated.
That’s not to say the app only supports structured data. “Unstructured” data is also supported. The app includes public APIs on the backend that allows IT professionals to integrate Teamchat into their existing systems, similar to Google at Work. Beerud told me that in most cases it only takes a “few minutes” to integrate the APIs into these systems.
WhatsApp “doesn’t work well for businesses” due to limitations
With all these features, Teamchat is looking to become the “WhatsApp for business,” especially since, as Beerud says, WhatsApp “doesn’t work well for businesses” due to limitations in group chat (100 maximum participants) as well as supporting only “unstructured” data like most other messaging applications.
One of the other benefits that should get a lot of business attention is the fact that the basic app is free and comes bundled up with lots of preprogrammed chatlets. However, IT departments and small businesses can customize the chatlets to suit their organization or create their own for a fee.
Right now, Teamchat is available for iOS and Android, but Beerud assures me that a “Windows Phone native application is on the roadmap,” though no timeframe was given for an official release. Until then, the app does indeed work on the web, so users of Microsoft’s OS or any other currently unsupported OS or device can still utilize the app in their workplace.