Exclusive Interview- Vikas Bhonsle, CEO, Crayon Software

Businesses seek to recover and respond to a changing environment in the wake of COVID-19. IT leaders are in-depth analyzing the challenges and opportunities. In a candid interaction with DQ Channels, Vikas Bhonsle, CEO Crayon Software Experts talked about how Crayon is playing a vital role in helping their customers and partners to rise above disruption and reimagine digital transformation in the current scenario.

How prepared was Crayon Software to handle such an unprecedented situation? Did you face any challenge because of employees working from home?

Crayon Software has been operational throughout this challenging situation and will continue to help customers to navigate these difficult times. As per government instructions, our office remains closed to date. We are a young company and hence our transition to remote work has been seamless so far. Being a globally distributed company, our employees are pioneers in location-independent work practices.

Our deep technical expertise, combined with business objectives in data maturity, and strong vendor relationships ensure that in this situation, we are surrounded by exceptional market opportunities. We stand committed to help our employees, customers, and business partners throughout this unprecedented situation.

 In this time of total lockdown wherein your team can't visit customers, how are you ensuring 24x7 service and support to your customers?

As a born in the cloud company, we see no disruption in servicing our Customers and Partners as our processes, framework, tech set-up, and support are adept at helping us work this way. Equipped with new-age digital tools our employees collaborate and help customers as well as partners to adapt to the changing workplace experiences.

Crayon’s entire gamut of services is now available at attractive techno commercial value propositions. This includes making sure we have contingencies in place to deal with possible disruptions.

As the workforces are being disrupted, we are also connecting customers’ employees by providing special access to collaborative tools and solutions to ensure ease of business and productivity. We have increased our capacity to address customers’ need to reduce on-premise or on the cloud infrastructure costs with better investment plans.

 How is Crayon Software supporting the partner ecosystem?

The world is fast embracing the need to go digital and as a result “CLOUD FIRST” is a strategy that is inherently embedded by businesses. Across the market, customers are adopting cloud and next-generation technologies, giving ample opportunities for partners.

Working on similar lines, we are conducting webinars to help partner transit to cloud platforms and offer them Cloud IQ lifecycle management from onboarding to billing.

The current focus is to prioritize an ecosystem-based distribution, where most of the partners involved aren’t just doing transactional business but also influencing the buying pattern and market demands such that all partners can communicate and bring in the brand value to a scale, much accurately and effectively.

At Crayon we significantly invest in our partners to help them build the marketing muscle to their brand and be successful. We make the biggest change by empowering partners to reinvent themselves and remain competitive in a digitally transforming environment.

With a remote working model offering lots of benefits over the office, experts predict very soon this will be the new normal. How is Crayon positioned to help its customers in such scenario?

The pandemic-forced dive into remote working model might have spurred a paradigm shift for organizations across the world. Employees are being more productive as they are getting flexible options to design their days for the best professional and personal life outcomes. Recently TCS announced that as much as 75% of their workforce will be working from home by the year 2025.

The economic impact of the pandemic is more likely to force employers to rethink on cost-cutting. While layoffs may default option for employers in such situations, they can also rethink their business strategy by reducing rent obligations by simply letting employees work from home.

As more companies automate services, collect and analyze more data, streamline processes, they are increasingly more digital and require more complex technologies. Essentially, organizations in all industries are becoming software companies. These companies are prioritizing digital transformations because they are the cornerstone of their business strategy.

Crayon is well-positioned to help customers and partners, who want to switch to a larger permanent work-from-home employee base. Our cost-savvy, service-oriented approach coupled with technological expertise helps customers uncover new revenue streams and simplify the complicated journey to the cloud and other cloud technologies.

With physical events getting canceled for an indefinite time, what is your mantra for survival on the marketing front?

Events and trade shows around the world are getting called off to adhere to social distancing. We foresee much tighter regulations up ahead and hence going virtual will be the mantra for survival. As other forms of marketing take back seat, this is the right time for businesses to make the most out of the other forms of marketing strategies such as Webinars, Email, Campaign Management, Virtual Seminars, Social Media Marketing, PR & Corporate Communications, CSR Initiatives, etc.

At Crayon Software, we have thoughtfully and proactively transitioned our strategies to conduct more Webinars, Virtual Forums, Media Buying, Content Curation, Social Media Marketing, Campaigns, PR, Joint Go to Market Initiatives with our OEM’s, CSR Initiatives, etc. to reach out to our potential customer and partner bases.

 Have you been supporting the broader community beyond your employees and customers?

Crayon's strength lies in its 'people', and we have gone all-in to help the community during this crisis. We have contributed a significant amount to the PM CARES fund to fight the pandemic. Through our social handles, we are spreading awareness messages online to educate masses about preventive measures. Our employees are also contributing to their respective state government relief funds, volunteering for govt initiatives, and conducting training sessions for job aspiring people. Some of them are going the extra mile by helping communities by distributing groceries, food, and vegetables for several hundreds of families.