Excellent communications is the life blood of any successful business, now thanks to specialist UK firm Vocal, a system once used exclusively by the emergency services and business continuity market, is now being rolled out to the commercial world.

Called iModus, an innovative messaging and communications platform, it offers a wealth of options to companies when it comes to talking to staff and customers - whether by email, desktop messaging, SMS, pager, telephone or web.

Developed by Colchester-based Vocal, one of the UK’s leading emergency communications companies, iModus is a one-stop-shop solution for broadcast communications.

According to Sales Director, Daren Rapley : “It’s the perfect business to business or even business to consumer communications tool, which can be adapted to suit individual needs. The system provides real time communication, sending and receiving text, voice and web messages, even containing graphical content. ”

iModus is already well known as the technology behind Warn&Inform, used by many police forces and local authorities across the country to broadcast emergency alerts to subscribing companies in times of major business affecting incident or terrorist threat.

“While emergency messaging is a vital component of the system, it is so much more than that, it provides a complete integrated messaging suite to cover any area of business,” explains Daren. “Its use outside of the emergency sector is now widespread, while its robustness and flexibility means there’s no need to worry about system or IT failure as our infrastructure means iModus continues to work when other systems may be failing.”

Global specialist insurer Beazley has worked with Vocal for more than three years and subscribes to iModus, not only for emergency communication but for internal security and building management services. According to Simon Robinson, Head of Business Continuity Planning for Beazley: “We use iModus to monitor our communications room and office environment. This sends an email or SMS message if a fire or temperature alarm is activated, enabling us to react out of office hours without the need for 24-hour physical monitoring, such as security guards.”

He continues: “We have found iModus to be a very reliable and malleable system.”

Available as an off-the-shelf or bespoke package, iModus can be tailored by department or function and delivers information in real time on a global scale.