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Next Generation of SaaS with RELE.AI - An SI Expansion Webinar

Next Generation of SaaS with RELE.AI - An SI Expansion Webinar on how WhatsApp can be used for the business growth by the organisations

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Archana Verma
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DQ Channels held a webinar with RELE.AI on 16th of July 2021 on the Next generation of SaaS with the SI community of India. Juan Baron, CEO & Co-Founder, RELE.AI, Kurt Infeld, CMO, RELE.AI, Ibrahim Ahmad, Consulting Group Editor, Cybermedia and Sathish Kannan, Principal Consultant, Bignify, a partner of RELE.AI participated in the discussion. The focal point of the discussion was how WhatsApp can be used as a front-end app for SaaS by the organisations and how it can help them to grow their business.

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The webinar was an attempt by RELE.AI, a SaaS company based in Switzerland to expand in India. This is a good opportunity for the Systems Integrators of India to connect with RELE.AI to expand their business in SaaS domain.

Ibrahim Ahmad set the tone of the webinar in his inaugural address by highlighting the importance of SaaS in today's context. He pointed out the technological, commercial, business processes and operational advantages of SaaS to underline how important it was for today's SI community, especially in India.

Presentations to the SI community

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SIJuan Baron

Juan Baron, CEO and Co-Founder, RELE.AI, showcased how the technology could be transformative for the Indian market. India is by far the largest WhatsApp region with over 500M monthly active users.

Within this large user base, millions of users leverage the app as a business tool. Here is where RELE.Ai comes in to enable companies to be more productive via personal instant messaging workflow and process automation. The technology allows for the SI community and the companies to centralise and automate their business processes, using WhatsApp as a front end.

Together with their local partner, Bignify, RELE.AI is entering the market with many proofs of concept projects in the pipeline. The technology is industry agnostic and can be applicable to numerous business processes.

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Kurt Infeld, Chief Marketing Officer laid out the global go to market strategy of RELE.AI. Prime focus lies on regions with high usage of WhatsApp assuming that high private usage also indicates a higher usage in business interactions. Currently these regions are Latin America, India and the Middle East.

RELE.AI is setting up strong footholds in those regions thereby focusing on a strong partner network. System integrators are playing a vital role in this approach. On one hand, they have an established client base and on the other they have the know-how on software development and are able to support their clients in onboarding to RELE.AI.

Benefits for partners are attractive with revenue based compensations. On top of this the innovative platform provides them with an opportunity to present their clients a new way of working and of using WhatsApp for productivity. Projects can be sold directly to the clients in setting up the customized workflows and in supporting their clients in all aspects of using the RELE.AI platform.

In Juan Baron's presentation it was insightful to see how his organisation has expanded across the world. The slide below shows the presence of RELE.AI in blue-shaded regions.

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There was a fireside chat session, in which Sathish Kannan explained to Dr Archana Verma, Editor, DQ Channels why RELE.AI was a good option for the Indian SI community and for the enterprises and SMBs in India and what the advantages of going with RELE.AI were as compared to many other SaaS organisations present in India.

Fireside Chat

   SIArchana Verma | dqchannels

SI

1)  Why should Indian companies engage with RELE.AI ?

First of all India has the largest WhatsApp user base on a global scale. Of the 2.3 billion WhatsApp users, there are about 500 million in India alone

We believe that about 20% of users do use WhatsApp not only for private communication but also to do business with and to interact with their peers in companies, dealer / distributors and other stakeholders

So, we are talking of 100 million potential users that would rather interact with their company systems through WhatsApp than via mobile Apps.

This is where RELE.AI has a unique offer that cannot be found anywhere else in the market

RELE.AI connects WhatsApp to any enterprise software with an API. Such software could be an ERP system like e.g. SAP or any CRM system such as Salesforce, ZOHO, Hubspot, SAP , Tally , Odoo, Shopify  etc. And of course any other enterprise system such as HRM, logistics, and many more

In addition RELE.AI provides a workflow tool that lets companies fully customize their workflows. Such way, employees can interact with the enterprise systems directly from WhatsApp following the companies’ customized workflows

All this is providing a great offer for Indian companies. They can improve productivity, increase engagement with their systems, gather more relevant information and ease the interaction for their employees.

The implementation of RELE.AI is really easy and just requires basic development work on our SDK (Software Development Kit). The SDK is available for free and can be accessed and used by anybody.

The sign-up on the platform is required to put the workflows and connections into production. RELE.AI covers a flat fee of USD 6 per user/month including unlimited messages, unlimited workflows and unlimited connections.

2) You have been in India for a little over 3 months. What has been the response?

The last three months journey in India for RELE.AI has been quite exciting . We have reached out to many Enterprise customers & System integrators across Industry verticals and the response has been encouraging leading to multiple POC’s and Use cases.

Customers are excited about the benefits RELE is bringing to the table 

  • Whatsapp integration to any CRM/ERP system 
  • Free POC before you scale up 
  • No upfront investment 
  • Flat fee including unlimited use cases, workflows and connections to the backend systems.  

3) Where do you see use cases of RELE? Is it very Industry specific? 

The use cases are across industry verticals. The beauty of the system is that it allows customers to configure multiple workflows to suit their business needs. We are currently working on POCs with firms in Engineering, Telecom/ OTT, Cab hailing, Consumer durable, Ecommerce, Logistics and more. We can cut across industries…We have workflows for every company and every industry.

4)  What are the kinds of use cases you see in Indian market?

Business Function Use Case Overview
Sales & Marketing Access pipelines, data exchange, open new accounts, …..
Finance Get payments approved & access reports, ….
HR Employee Onboarding & Feedbacks
IT Service management Create tickets, problem solution processes
Supply chain Purchase order approvals, vendor onboarding
Logistics Order management, location information, freight offering
Real estate Manage real estate portfolio, interact with tenants

5) How are you differentiated for Indian customers?

We offer huge value through our platform in the form of

  • Free POCS before you scale up commercially
  • Unlimited workflow at no extra cost – Allows you to make full use of the platform
  • SDK brings in the flexibility to connect to any enterprise system as long as there are API’s
  • Help companies cut down investments in developing multiple apps , multiple license fees for different systems
  • Bing a global player, we bring in global industry / use case learning’s and customer insights

6)  Are you restricting only to Whatsapp?

Whatsapp is one of the largest messaging platforms globally. Our priority therefore is to take  advantage of this large user base globally. Our future roadmap has integration with other messaging platforms as well.

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Q&A with SI community

During the Questions-Answers session, more clarity was gained about the work of RELE.AI. In response to an attendee's question about how they could collaborate with RELE.AI as systems integrator, the spokespersons illuminated that RELE.AI had a well-evolved system of collaborating with the SIs. They gave all backend support to the SI who worked with the end client organisations to extend RELE.AI's buisness in India. In response to another question about whether RELE.AI had a server in India, Juan responded that they did plan to have server expansions in India. Responding to whether RELE.AI gave customer support or whether the SIs had to provide customer support to the end clients, Juan responded that the SIs would provide the customer support to the end client, however in case they needed help, RELE.AI would be ready to help them. In response to another question, Juan clarified that they were willing to have as many SIs as possible across India and were not going to work with only a handful of SIs. Kurt clarfied in response to a question that RELE.AI had extensive profitable partner programmes which the collaborating SIs could avail of.

"SaaS is an evolving technology and is fast spreading in India and it would be profitable to adopt this technology by the SIs and by the organisations."

--Ibrahim Ahmad, Consulting Group Editor, Cybermedia

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Ibrahim gave the concluding remarks by saying that SaaS was an evolving technology and was fast spreading in India and it would be profitable to adopt this technology by the SIs and by the organisations.

Read more from Dr Archana Verma here

Read products news here

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