Aprimo to focus on Asia

Kishore Kumar

HYDERABAD: Dissimilar culture coupled with economic contrast had been restricting Aprimo Incorporated’s oriental expansion. But next year would see the enterprise marketing management (EMM) provider get cozy with Asia Pacific.

The Indianapolis-based company expects its channel partners-driven strategy in the region to duplicate the success it had in the US and Europe. The company is setting up its team for the Asia-Pacific market in Australia.

``We see 2007 as an opportunity for us to take our business to Asia. First, we would adopt a proactive stance in Australia and then look at Korea, Japan, Thailand, India and the Middle-East through partners,’’ said Robert C Boehnlein, senior vice-president, Aprimo Incorporated.

``We are starting to get involved in Asia. Somehow it had been an elusive market for us. We thought that we really needed to get our business operationally performing well in the US and Europe before starting our business in Asia,’’ added Boehnlein.

However, the company is looking at deploying limited amount of partners in Asia-Pacific. ``We would prefer to have a small number of very competitive partners than to use a very broad approach of having lots of partners. We are looking for some competitive partners so that we can build them as part our team,’’ said Boehnlein.

Boehnlein added that Aprimo would focus heavily on channel partners though it would also have direct sales in team in the future.

``Clearly, direct sales in Asia is one of the strategies that we are considering and we will look to hire direct sales staff in the next two years. However, we believe that strategy is focus heavily on our partners. It is likely to be more proficient for us. We need partners who know the dynamics of Asia. So channel partners would be a stronger contributor in Asia,’’ said Boehnlein.

In January Aprimo would also start a round-the-clock customer care program from Hyderabad catering to its Asian clients. ``Team members in Hyderabad would be covering questions and issues associated with our software for our Asian customers,’’ explained Boehlein.

The program would be run in associated with Virtusa Corporation, which is one of Aprimo’s systems integrator partner.

Aprimo has over 150 customers worldwide across verticals such as financial services, retail, telecommunication, media and entertainment, manufacturing, energy and pharma.

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