"Solution providers should add value to us and also to our customers"

After successfully targeting segments like BFSI and ITES for providing

customer interaction management (CIM) solutions, Talisma Corporation is now

looking at niche segments like healthcare. Delivering and deploying these CIM

solutions at the end-customer level, the company works with its set of nine

solution providers in India. But Girish Krishnamurthy is candid in stating that

Talisma will not go on adding more partners to its channel network, unless they

can deliver some value to the end-customer and the vendor as well.

What is Talisma's global marketing strategy for its

product offerings?



We have a strong channel-based approach towards selling our products. We

operate with the help of three different channels — direct, partner and

self-service (Internet-based).

Girish Krishnamurthy MD-APAC, Talisma Corporation

As most of our products involve a fair amount of integration

with other systems, we have a strong partner strategy to help us achieve our

goal. We have a strong focus towards geographies like North America and Europe

for the enterprise segment.  

How is the Indian market different from other geographies

where you have your presence?



The Indian market is quite active for us and we have some of the big

enterprises as our customers here. Segments like BFSI and the booming ITES

sector are very important to us. But the Indian market is pretty different when

it comes to our self-service channel that is primarily Internet-based.

Internet-based enterprise product sales are not happening in India.

Moving forward, we do expect this to be a good profiting area

for the company as there are some customers who are showing greater level of

confidence on the Internet-based models in India. Healthcare is another area,

which holds a lot of potential in India.

Some of Talisma's customers in India include AOL, Aviva,

Birla Sun Life, Canara Bank, Canon, Citibank, Cholamandalam AMC, Club Mahindra,

Daimler-Chrysler, Dell, DHL, Himalaya, ICICI Lombard, iGATE, Microsoft,

Prudential ICICI, Reliance Infocomm, Siemens, Sony and UTI Bank. Within India we

have 600 customers and around 640 worldwide.  

How does Talisma work with solution providers? What kind

of opportunities do your products offer to this community when it comes to

giving them a chance to move up the value chain?



At present, we have a small but very active solution provider community of

about nine partners in India. We work very closely with them when it comes to

providing our products to end-customers in this region.

Before deciding for such business critical partnerships, we

look for specific qualities in them. This is precisely the reason why we don't

have too many partners. We certainly look at the value that these partners are

going to add to our products and our end-customers value proposition as well. We

also look at the business match between these solution providers and us.

So having closely looked at these issues, we are sure to add

value to our partner's goals and objectives. As a result a partner moves up

the value chain much easily with the help of our products and offerings. 

With so many technological advancements happening at the

end-customer's access point level, how do you make sure that your product

offering is always cutting edge and the latest?



There are two things involved here. One is the business innovation and the

other is the technical innovation. We need to look at the research and

development and make sure that holistically, it is business driven. The right

kind of products should come out from the research so that the same can be sold

easily in the market. In order to achieve this task we always go back to our

customers for getting the feedback through regular interactions. These

interactions help us decide on the overall product roadmap and further enhancing

our business model as well.

Which verticals and geographies would you be focusing on

in the coming months? Are you looking at adding new partners to your network?



As far as geographies are concerned, we have a big focus towards the

European region now. We have just shortlisted around 30 partners that we would

be working with in the European region. Globally we work very closely with

around 75 partners. We are always open to adding new partners. This is an

evolving process for us.

But we do not add partners just for the sake of increasing

the numbers. As mentioned before, we always look at the overall value that a

partner is going to add to our products. At the same time we also look at the

value that this partner is delivering to our end customer.

ZIA ASKARI