Every industry needs a different solution to address a process that is unique

Tell us about Pivotal CRM, which is being offered by CDC Software. What
are the CRMs that are classified under this group?

Pivotal CRM delivers customer relationship management solution and has the
flexibility to conform to the customers' way of doing business. It delivers a
custom fit that enables them to capitalize on their unique business processes
and create an experience that the customer desires. Its footprint covers sales,
marketing, service automation, partner management, analytics, call scripting and
mobile CRM.

Which micro verticals are covered under your offering?

The micro verticals that we cover as a part of our offering are private
banking/wealth management, commercial banking/treasury, investment banking,
retail asset management, wholesale asset management, life insurance, health
insurance, manufacturing of medical devices, legal services, general insurance,
packaged food, high-end retail and real estate.

CRMs are also used to manage smaller customer base, such as wealth management
and high-end retailing. This is because the focus here is to understand and
capture customer's requirements, behavioral patterns, likes and dislikes, and
therefore modeling a process to ensure customer delight and increased revenue.

What is the latest development on the CRM front, especially in the Indian
market?

The latest trends in CRM are the adoption of mobile CRM and extending the
CRM to xRM. Most customers who are facing processes, not directly mapped to the
traditional CRM concept of sales service and marketing are now being considered
as candidates for adoption a CRM solution, thereby extending it into xRM. CRM
systems are built with a flexible process engine that can be used to define the
processes, which also take advantage of the information capturing and
relationship mapping capabilities.

What is the go-to-market strategy in marketing CRM solutions?

In India, we are looking at addressing the market directly and through
partners with a focus on enabling the partners to sell and implement the
solution. We would not only stick to traditional sales, service and marketing
but would also like to be an xRm player in order to be present in processes that
our customers are facing.

We are looking at a range of partners in India, which include systems
integrators, who we would leverage heavily in addressing large opportunities and
also the government sector, which is one of the key focus areas for us this
year.

Most CRM software vendors stress that a successful CRM effort requires a
holistic approach. How do you address this challenge?

Our approach to successful CRM deployment is slightly different from the
others. We do not believe in 'one size fits all', meaning that every industry
needs a different solution to address a process that is unique.

We encourage companies to start small and grow. This approach will have a
greater chance of success as change in small amounts can be controlled. Hence,
while evaluating any CRM, I would advise customers to consider CRMs that are
modular, which can adopt to their processes easily and which is scalable to
their growth requirements.

Rachna Gupta

rachnag@cybermedia.co.in