Savvion ropes in customers as partners

MUMBAI, INDIA: In what can be termed as a very unusual go-to-market strategy, business process management (BPM) solutions vendor-Savvion, has found a model to reach out to a wider customer base for its niche application suite. It will try to convert its customers into its partners.

Recently the company signed up 35 licensing deals with new and existing customers in the US, Canada, South America, Europe, India and APAC region.

The company plans to identify some of its customers who will also take its applications to the market. The rationale behind this is actually quite simple.

Savvion develops business processes in close coordination with its customers. For instance, if it is working with a company called ABC in the BPO space, then ABC's team works closely with Savvion in identifying the various processes in this vertical and then modeling it so that the vendor can create applications on it.

“This is because when we build a framework for any business vertical then the customer gives us the knowledge. This means there is a joint IPR involved and the customer can also sell it in a specific vertical,” explained Mangesh Deshpande, Director-Sales, Savvion India.

So Savvion can use the framework it has created in collaboration with ABC to offer to other companies in the BPO space. Therefore ABC doubles as its customer and also its partner.

“We are working out the finer details, like if ABC sells the framework to another client then what will our revenue sharing model be, the kind of royalty we will pay to ABC if we sell the framework to another BPO company etc,” added Deshpande. There are other details that need to be sorted out like whether certain modules of the process can be sold or should the entire process be sold and how to determine the sales and revenue proposition for this.

This program is at a nascent stage but Savvion has identified some customers in India with whom it will work closely on this initiative. It is also putting in place a team which will work with the customers closely during the entire program from modeling the framework for a vertical with a customer, developing applications on it and then targeting more customers in that space and closing deals.

The company will also push those processes that have scalability, especially in areas where not much impetus has been given to BPM. For instance, in the education vertical little attention has been paid to a process like student lifecycle management or student self-service. Creating a framework for such similar applications will help Savvion to simply replicate it for some institution with minimal changes.

Besides this, Savvion is also working on engaging with tier-two solution providers for its products. Currently it is working with tier-1 systems integrators (SI) like Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro Infotech, Infosys, Satyam, Patni etc. These SIs bring in sizeable portion of the revenues, but Savvion expects that the solution providers ought to contribute significantly to the business within two years.

“We have just signed up Nastek as our solution provider in India and are now talking to several other smaller players who can take our products, en masse,” noted Deshpande.

Savvion will also have a demo center where solution providers can bring in incumbent customers to show them the benefit of opting for BPM and the ease of use it offers.