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'The Web is not used to its full potential in applications because of bad user experience'

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DQC News Bureau
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His mission is to make development of web content more efficient and

affordable. With this mission, Macromedia’s Country Manager Shriram

Krishnamachari has already achieved a 78 percent growth for his company in the

country. To better this growth he has clearly identified education as one of the

most promising segments and has set up an exclusive channel just to address this

market. Shriram is confident that through the newly introduced lead management

program, Macromedia resellers will hugely benefit and would help the company

record a 100 percent growth this fiscal. Excerpts from the interview. 

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When did Macromedia start operations in India?



We were present in India through our distributor Wipro Infotech since 1994.
After starting our liaison office in June 2001, we appointed two more

distributors: Tech Pacific and Sonata Software. Seeing the huge deployment of

our products, we decided to set up this office in India.

We also felt that we need to be here to take care of our existing channels,

build up newer channels, train them and also build relations with our corporate

and alliance partners. And this has brought in rewards for us in the last one

year´s time.

We have announced a major initiative called Macromedia MX for rich Internet applications

Shriram Krishnamachari
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Can you quantify the rewards?



We have grown 78 percent in the last one year. We have our tier-two channel

partners in place, where we have 26 Macromedia preferred resellers spread across

10 metros. Now we are planning to add another 15 preferred resellers by the end

of the JAS quarter in metros as well as in non-metros.

What is the Macromedia Preferred Reseller Partner Club?



All our preferred resellers become part of the Macromedia Preferred Reseller

Partner Club (MPRPC). They who get lot of benefits like listing on our web site,

access to partner Extranet, training, collaterals, and now lead management

program.

Could you elaborate on the lead management program?



Macromedia has implemented a new lead management program for its preferred

resellers in which all the leads that are generated through Macromedia’s web

sites as trial-copy downloads are given to preferred reseller to follow it up

further.

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Lots of people attend our seminars and hence we get huge amount of software

downloads happening for 30-days trial copies soon after. We qualify these

downloads and pass them to our preferred resellers.

What are the initiatives that you have announced lately?



We have announced a major initiative called Macromedia MX. It is basically a

family of tools and server technology, which helps create what we call

"Rich Internet Applications".

Today what we are seeing is that the web is not used to its full potential,

or is lying untapped in terms of automation, application and so on, because of

bad user experience.

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What are those bad user experiences?



Bad user experience here implies that people don´t spend time on the site.

They want to do online transactions but they don´t do it. In rich Internet

applications we clearly see two things. One is that these applications will have

the benefits or richness of a desktop. This means it will be interactive,

responsive and intuitive. And second, it would leverage the benefits of the web,

basically reach and low deployment cost.

If you see most of the applications on the web, like online shopping for

instance, you have to fill up a large number of forms and you end up spending a

lot of time. In contrast, you have applications on your desktop that are very

fast, interactive and responsive. You hardly get to see such applications on the

web. This leads to bad user experience.

What is new on the channels front?



We are setting up a separate channel for the education sector. The partners

in this channel would be referred to as the Macromedia education resellers. We

started about two month back and have three partners for this. We plan to add

another 15 education resellers by this quarter.

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How different will they be from the regular preferred resellers?



The preferred reseller can service the government, education, corporate, or

any other segment. But we felt that we need to have a specific focus on

education. There is a huge opportunity for us in this segment. Education

resellers will be targeting the corporate training institutes, schools, colleges

and universities, where people want to teach web technologies, multimedia and so

on.

What are the margins your partners get selling Macromedia products?



It is healthier than others, and is at least in double-digits. It is also

based on the value additions that any reseller would give.

Since your products are focused on web technologies, how much did the

dot.com burst affect you business?



Yes it did affect our business. But we have been fast enough to take

necessary steps and aligned ourselves in different segments. Education is a huge

opportunity for us. The other opportunity that is present now is in the form of

corporate IT client, where we can deploy our rich web applications.

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What will be the key focus of your company for this year?



Our key focus from business point of view will be to grow this business by

100 percent this year. Besides, we will be looking at newer areas within

education and corporate IT. >From the channel point of view we are adding

education resellers.

We are working with schools and universities to make Macromedia part of the

curriculum. We are doing corporate seminars. We are leveraging on our Alliance

Partner Program that involves third-party vendors who build solutions on

Macromedia products.

How important and big is your support network?



Our software products don´t require much of support. We don´t need to push

them very hard either. Our products are readily available ex-stock in the

country. Macromedia is doing lot of market generation activities in terms of

seminars, roadshows, direct mailers and promotions, so that the customer becomes

aware about the latest versions.

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Post-sales, customer requires only training on a specialized scale. And for

this we have Macromedia Authorized Training Partners. Our support site was

ranked by Association of Software Professionals as the number one support site

last year. Our registered customers get a 90-day free technical support by

e-mail and fax.

What are you doing about piracy in Macromedia products?



We have become a part of BSA in India. We educate our customers in seminars.

We have recently added the Network License Detection function into the latest

range of software that detects another user on a company network using the same

copy of license.

NELSON JOHNY in Mumbai

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