An SMS-based CRM and survey platform for research, NGOs, and healthcare programs

Context

TargetMobi ran an SMS-based CRM and survey platform used by researchers, public-health professionals, NGOs, and small businesses across the US and Uganda — plus, through a dedicated healthcare vertical, automated patient appointment reminders and follow-ups. I joined as Chief Technology Officer after initial development, hired directly by the CEO, and owned the platform end-to-end through its final release — run concurrently, part-time, alongside a full-time architecture role. Status: historical, inactive.

Challenge

The platform had to serve two very different operating environments on one codebase: US research institutions and healthcare programs on one side, NGO field programs in Uganda on the other — each with its own SMS gateway economics and reliability profile, with no tolerance for one region's outage or pricing change touching the other. On top of that, the healthcare vertical needed patient-appointment logic kept cleanly separate from the core marketing/survey engine, and one integration had to reach a third-party tool with no public API at all.

Approach

• Built a provider-abstraction layer routing SMS through two gateways behind one interface — Tropo for Uganda, Plivo for the US and elsewhere — isolating each region's provider risk from the other.
• Built the core campaign and survey engine: single-send and staggered SMS campaigns, segment targeting, and structured surveys with automatic reply capture matched back to the sender.
• Delivered a dedicated healthcare vertical scheduling patients, appointments, and multi-stage follow-ups relative to an appointment date, kept cleanly separate from the core campaign engine.
• Shipped a browser-automation integration to pull tablet-survey results out of a third-party tool with no public API, rather than leaving that data stranded.
• Ran full operational ownership for years: deployment, cron/queue-driven scheduled dispatch, and error monitoring, on Ruby on Rails 4.2 / MySQL.

Key decisions

• One interface, two gateways — abstracting Tropo and Plivo behind a single routing layer meant a regional outage or pricing change in one country never became the other's problem.
• Healthcare kept separate, not bolted on — the appointment-reminder vertical got its own scheduling model relative to appointment date, rather than overloading the general campaign engine with healthcare-specific logic.
• Ship the ugly integration rather than leave a gap — when a partner tool had no API, browser automation closed the data gap instead of leaving field researchers to re-key survey results by hand.

What clients said

"TargetMobi has unique experience in providing mobile messaging and data collection services within diverse target populations… TargetMobi is not just a vendor, they are an integral part of the team."

"TargetMobi's software was great to use. The questionnaires are easy to read, have nice big buttons and are fast to go through."

Outcomes

The platform supported a 5-year NIH-funded research initiative with the UW Madison Dept. of Family Medicine, the UW Madison LiFE fall-prevention research program, and field assessments for World Vision Uganda and Limelight Uganda Ltd. — plus commercial and NGO clients across the US and Kampala, Uganda. No message-volume, revenue, or retention figures were tracked at the time, so none are claimed here; impact is evidenced by the named institutional and NGO clients above, sustained by one technology leader for seven years.