Indian CRM market to grow despite slowdown

Indian CRM market to grow despite slowdown

India has always been a leader as development center for CRM technologies

Thursday, July 17, 2008

CDC CRM Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is a fast growing provider of enterprise CRM and related solutions in India. The solutions offered by CDC CRM stand out as they are micro vertical focused and thus are ready to be deployed in the segments they address.

Vinod Ganesh Ram, co-founder and chief operating officer of the firm tells B.F. Firos of CyberMedia News about the marker CDC CRM addresses in India.

What differentiates CDC CRM from other such products in the Indian market?

CDC CRM brings to India one of the leading and the most flexible CRM, Pivotal CRM. Pivotal CRM has been in existence for over 13 years with over 1800 customers worldwide covering industries such as Financial Services, Banking, Real Estate, Manufacturing and Telecom.

We believe in the approach “Not One Size fits All “and hence the need for having specific CRM for specific Micro verticals. We believe in building the best practices of the businesses within the product so that companies in that Micro Vertical deploy the CRM with minor modifications and quickly thus resulting in a lower cost .

What is your view of the CRM market in India; where it is heading and key trends?

The CRM Industry, according to ASSOCHAM, was projected at $40 million in 2006 and was growing at an annual rate of 40 per cent. The CRM industry is highly fragmented, if we were to divide the CRM Market players, then you have the ERP Centric, the Specialists, True CRM players and Point Solution Providers.

What are the latest trends in micro verticals in CRM?

The Pure Play CRM players believe that businesses within verticals and within business lines differ very much and customer management may be not the same always. Take for instance the Vertical of Banking in Financial Services. Within Banking customer management in Commercial Banking is completely different from Retail customers, one in B2B and the other is B2C. This brings out differences in the processes followed in customer management.

Also Managing High Net worth customers is completely a different Ball Game. There for e CRM now a days are being known as the “Front Office “in many Industries such as Wealth Management, Asset Management and Capital Markets. The CRM’s have built in capabilities to integrate with trading systems, financial planning applications, registrar systems, and Core Insurance and Banking systems.

The concept of “client-centricity” has been steadily gaining traction inside and outside of the financial services industry. More than just a feel-good concept, when taken seriously, client-centricity is a model that can profoundly impact a business’ processes, culture, and technology.

Client-centric strategies dictate that the client be considered as the focal point around which a business structures its way of doing business. The goal is to not only deliver a more satisfying client experience, but provide greater client insight and value to the firm, thereby improving profitability.

What are the global best practices in CRM and how Indian companies are poised in terms of competence and delivery?

Every business is unique, with different customer strategies, different business processes, and different user expectations. The challenge for businesses today is to use differentiated customer strategies and take intelligent action across all of their channels—and to manage these activities efficiently and profitably using customer relationship management solutions.

The need is for CRM flexibility and sophistication—the desire to have both powerful, appropriate functionality out of the box and the ability to mould the software to fit unique business processes supported by scalability and deployability.

India has always been a leader as development center for CRM technologies. This apart, India has also been the hub for the customer services part of leading global businesses through captive and outsourced contact centres.

What are the trends impacting customer management with particular reference to verticals?

If any word best characterizes current market conditions, “uncertainty” may be it. FSIs may not be pessimistic, per se, but at a minimum they are cautious, as uncertainties abound: regarding consumer spending, commodity prices, construction costs, interest rate changes, growth, inflation, and more.

These conditions are leading Financial Services companies to tighten their belts, get more done with less people and focus on building trust with their customers and their loyalty. This seems to be of importance across all the various verticals looking at CRM as a facilitator to achieve their goals.

What are the sectorial trends with regards to deployment of CRM?

While the early adopters of CRM have been Financial Services and the Telecom industry, other verticals like Manufacturing, IT/ITES, healthcare, etc. are increasing focusing on CRM to build their customer value.

Could you brief us on your Indian and abroad presence?

CDC software has presence in 56 countries and is a part of CDC Corporation which is headquartered in Atlanta , Georgia. CDC Software has over 400 people working in the Research and development facility based out of Bangalore. Over 300 of them are dedicated to the Development, Testing, Training, Support and Implementation of Pivotal CRM.

How do your go-to-market strategy in India?

As described earlier the Indian Market in the infancy/growth stage and is likely to grow despite the slowdown in the economy. Industries such as Manufacturing and Distribution are in the infancy stage of Deploying CRM and may consider solution to address their departmental requirements.

The Financial Services Industry (Mainly Banking Insurance and Capital Markets) are in the growth Phase of CRM deployment. They are likely to replace their Departmental or Point solutions by Enterprise CRM’s.

Our Strategy is multi-fold:

To position ourselves as point solutions to address departmental needs showing them a growth path to deploy the other components of the CRM when they are ready in Manufacturing, and
To position ourselves as a full-fledged Micro Verticalised CRM in the chosen segments in the Financial Services and Home building verticals .

How do you see the overall market scenario, especially in the context of the much-trumpeted US slowdown?

The focus of CDC CRM Solutions is India and South Asia and as described earlier we see immense potential for CRM per se.

Any plans for acquisitions? Our focus initially is to grow ourselves organically in the region.

©CyberMedia News