Customers' needs better addressed with CRM

BANGALORE, INDIA: A Balakrishnan, president, Business Solutions, Religare Technologies in conversation with Amrita Tejasvi of DQChannels speaks about their CRM strategies and plans for future.

Why did Religare Technologies decide to venture into CRM solutions?



We have been an active service provider in CRM for the last three years. The decision to venture into CRM solutions offerings came about when the company decided to leverage further on its existing partnership with Microsoft. It was also fueled by a demand within the industry for this solution and opportunities that existed in the market.

Has this venture been profitable for the company?



Our vertical centric solutions Religare Technologies helps customers in implementing CRM faster and also to implement best practices in their business. This gives us further access to the specific problem, which helps us in making more customers and driving the business faster.

How do you plan to popularize the concept of CRM?

We will run domain specific roadshows to showcase our vertical solutions. We address the customers' needs better with CRM as the core platform.

What are the growth drivers for CRM? Will these be changing, keeping in mind the evolving market trends?



CRM deployments previously catered to core functionalities like opportunities, selling processes, sales operations and helpdesk services. Due to the financial crisis and tightening of budgets, SaaS will now become more prevalent. Use of smart phones will increase to drive sales force adoption. With Microsoft's offerings like xRM, vertical solutions will also assume more importance. Lastly, social CRM will no longer be a buzzword but become an essential element of the sales cycle.

What are the latest trends in this solution?

New trends are being seen in the area of content driven processes to tie proposals, bids, configurations and quotes integrated with authorization and order capture. Lead and opportunity management capabilities continue to be enhanced. Greater support for multi-tier, matrixed sales teams with role-specific functionality for inside, field and strategic sales people. Improvement is also being seen in multi-channel campaign management and campaign budget tracking.