“We want to educate partners and users about trends and benefits of enterprise content management”

At 50 years, John is adept at evaluating technology trends, problems and issues facing insurance organizations. His expertise comes to the fore as he works with FileNet Corporation’s product development team to create solutions that streamline business processes and improve efficiency. In a recent visit to India he explained to DQCI how he would like to replicate FileNet’s success and achievements with its global customers. 

What is FileNet Corporation’s specialization?

FileNet Corporation helps organizations make better and faster decisions by managing the content and processes that drive their business. FileNet’s enterprise content management (ECM) solutions allow customers to build and sustain competitive advantage. It manages content throughout their organization, automating and streamlining their business processes. It also simplifies their critical and everyday decision-making.

Companies are starting to see that they need to improve on their existing business processes. They are also recognizing that their critical information, which is their asset, is not effectively managed. Regulatory compliance with governing authorities is also increasing and there is a lot of focus on customer responsiveness. 

For the Indian market, we at FileNet would like to duplicate all our success and achievements that we’ve had with our global customers. The companies can benefit from our pool of industry expertise, a proven solution and get to partner a key vendor, which is the market leader in the ECM space.

The ability to leverage FileNet’s track record from a smaller installed base to huge and complex installations can become a key differentiator for companies in terms of survival, cost-reduction, faster turnaround of internal processes, drive customer loyalty, control of their digital assets and many more advantages.

How much of your business is direct and how much is through partners?

FileNet’s business model in Asia leverages our ValueNet partner network of resellers, system integrators (SIs) and application developers. It is a model where we depend fully on partners to sell, install and support customers. We will provide sales/marketing/technical support along with training and development programs. 

All partners appointed by us are technically certified. For sales, we have a rigorous training program. From the marketing standpoint, we run events together with partners and basically drive all demand generation activities. So in a nutshell, an infrastructure has been put in place to play an active role in supporting our Indian partners.

What will be your channel strategy? How many partners do you have worldwide and in India?

We have numerous partners across the world, from ISV, global alliances, trusted advisors and local SIs. In India we have recruited six local SIs as channel partners–HCL, Satyam, Datamatics, Dess, Datapoint and IL&FS. All have their own skillsets with complimentary business objectives and are leaders in their own field of expertise.

Is FileNet further expanding the channel partner network for its business in India? If yes, what will be your strategy?

Building a partner ecosystem in any country is really important, but having said that, managing it is equally challenging. From the FileNet point of view, we are committed to all our partners and want to ensure a win-win relationship. We want to make them successful and profitable. 

For now, we are focusing on just that–to grow, develop and nurture them. We see this as a long-term partnership and work as a team. The main objective is being able to bring value to our customers as the first imperative. Being able to establish ourselves (partners and FileNet) as trusted advisors to our customers is our main mission. We have recently appointed an Alliance Director, which has taken up the responsibility in recruiting and selecting future partners.

How do you plan to provide after-sales customer support?

Like any other software operations, our partners would be providing the 1st level support, and the second and third level would be provided by FileNet with support from Asian headquarters in Singapore and Australia.

Are all your solutions customized as per customer needs or do you have a ready packaged product to sell?

Our solutions are full in function and capabilities, packaged together with extensive APIs out of the box. However, customiza-tion will depend on our customers’ environment, and their requirements.

How do you look at India as market for FileNet’s business?

We are very excited about the Indian market, with a whole new team in place for ASEAN. India is our top priority after Singapore, as we see many opportunities in several verticals like banking and finance, insurance and government. FileNet is one company that has been a forefront player in this space. We are confident of having the right technology and solutions that companies are looking for.

Who are your competitors in India?

As our products are truly enterprise-wide solutions and covers the whole ECM–content, image, web and business process management–IBM is a formidable competitor at the extreme end. The other end would be the “build-your-own” kind of outfits. 

What is your marketshare worldwide? And what is the target that you have set for India?

Estimates show that we have over 20% marketshare in the ECM space. We see tremendous growth for FileNet in India, especially starting from a fairly low base, we are estimating an exponential number.

NELSON JOHNY in Mumbai