"With today's technology, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to communicate no matter what device you have," said Cinta Putra, 3n chief executive officer and co-founder.
Instead of relying on so-called blast e-mails or phone trees to communicate an urgent message to many people, 3n's system stores contact information for just about any communication device and method that people use today, Putra said.
"The system is intelligent enough to hunt me down," she said. "If I don't pick up my BlackBerry, then the system tries texting me, then my home [phone], then e-mail until I confirm contact. The administrator can see in real time which contact was confirmed and now they know how to get a hold of me."
The April 16 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which a student killed 32 people before taking his own life, brought to light the pitfall of relying on one communication mode for mass notification, said Patrick Stuver, 3n executive vice president and co-founder.
School administrators sent out campus-wide e-mails to alert students and faculty about the first of two shooting incidents on campus, Stuver said.
"Sending an e-mail out as a blast and hoping for the best … in 2007 is a questionable technology," he said. "You're counting on people being at their computer and checking their e-mail."
The company's existing clients include Fortune 100 companies, universities, cities and federal government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Environmental Protection Agency, Putra said.
