'We intend becoming a premier solutions company for value chain management'

Appacudal Bhaskar co-founded Questech India with a focus on providing turnkey

solutions for corporates and SMEs and in the process identified the sales force

automation market as a niche growth vertical for his company. His innovative

strategies has helped Questech achieve a 100 percent growth last fiscal. Bhaskar

is concentrating on setting up a strong partner network to further explore the

untapped opportunity in the SME segment. He outlines the company´s activities

and future plans in an exclusive interview with DQCI.

W hat are the core competencies of Questech?



Our prime objective is to help traditional business models converge towards

the networked economy. We have built a strong, experienced management team that

works with, and leads a group of extremely bright, talented and innovative

e-solution architects. Our development teams are small and highly focused,

allowing us to tackle complex challenges and deliver high-value solutions

effectively.

We are focused as a cross-platform company,

offering high-value vertical industry solutions. We further specialize in

areas of retail and distribution, manufacturing, healthcare and insurance.

Questech works towards creating contact between businesses, industries and

individuals. Our e-consultants help define the relationship between the customer’s

business model and application architecture thus connecting his business

strategy with operational reality.

How do you keep the commitment levels high at Questech for your partners?



At Questech, we value ourselves as partners to our customers, our employees

and our community. Our continuing efforts to provide individual packages and

solutions underline our commitment to quality and performance.

Our marketing strategies are formulated keeping our channel partners at the

core, as they help us reach out prospects in remote cities. Apart from following

the traditional pattern of reseller schemes and policies, which are used by our

competitors, we also try to plan out innovative campaigns for partners by

introducing packages that will motivate their performance.

Europe happens to be our main focus market, whereas India has been identified

as a prime market for BeforeSales. BeforeSales is a provider of sales force automation (SFA) solutions to small,

medium and large enterprises.

As a part of our channel initiative for BeforeSales, we plan to appoint

around 13 partners across the country. We are effectively moving the channel in

this direction and are now looking at promotional campaigns which will be more

relevant to their business.

How important is the channel for BeforeSales?



At BeforeSales, we believe that good partnerships are the key to successful

products. Therefore we value our partnerships and believe in leveraging partners’

strengths, providing healthy margins and building long-term profitable

relationships. We see that sales process re-engineering (SPR) and SFA are areas

of rapid growth in the enterprise application space. These applications will

provide users with tremendous productivity gains in managing their sales teams

and sales processes.

BeforeSales partners will have the opportunity to represent a global quality

product with healthy margins.

What is the USP of BeforeSales? Could you elaborate on its features?



According to a study by the Fenemore group, 71 percent of a salesperson’s

time is spent in activities other than selling. This includes repetitive tasks

and intense documentation that is associated with every sales call. This further

translates to lack of proper follow-ups, below optimum sales productivity and

hence lower margins. This leaves organizations with two options–to increase

the sales force or increase productivity of the current sales force.

The second option is most preferred, due to obvious reasons. sales process

automation, or SFA as it is more commonly referred to, focuses on automating the

sales process and allowing the salesperson to focus more time on selling.

Some of the key benefits of automating your sales force would be improved

clarity of your sales process, increased market focus, shorter sales cycles,

efficient follow-ups, maximized productivity and enhanced sales effectiveness.

BeforeSales had recently restructured its channel network. What are the

changes that have been brought into the distribution model?



Our goal is to penetrate the market through certified channel partners and

BeforeSales has restructured its channel network to meet this goal. Apart from

achieving geographic reach, this new initiative will also help us increase our

revenue flow.

Previously the company had a two-tier channel network consisting of national

distributors and resellers. With the new structure in place we have introduced

regional/key city VARs, national systems integrators, consulting partners and

industry vertical partners. The current channel strategy will help channel

partners earn margins up to 20 percent.

How do you plan to proliferate in the Indian market?



Through resellers of course, as we believe that they are the best vehicle to

reach users effectively. Partners are of the highest significance to us. We

offer tremendous opportunity for resellers as they can add value to their

customer’s business by automating their internal and external operations,

simply by getting certified as e-business solution provider.

BeforeSales always seeks quality organizations to represent, sell and support

its leading edge software product. Becoming a BeforeSales solution provider

allows an organization to provide real value to small and mid-size companies in

wholesale, retail, distribution, mail order, and service industries.

BeforeSales solution providers not only earn good profits from selling our

leading edge software product, but also by implementing these products into

businesses and providing software services over the years can look forward to

on-going revenue and profits.

The growth and success of any business depends on customer acquisition,

satisfaction and retention. BeforeSales has been successful in providing the

highest level of products and services by attracting some of the best talent in

the industry.

What are your long-term plans?



Questech plans to grow rapidly over the next three years, providing
enterprise software to small and mid-size companies. It also intends to

establish itself as a premier company providing solutions for value chain

management in newer markets.

SUNILA PAUL in Bangalore