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Top 10 Expectations from Digital Banking Users

Digital banking has caught the fancy of every bank in the world, from small to large. Digital, which assumes internet connectivity, allows customers to avail of banking services anytime, anywhere from their digital devices. Digital devices include laptops, tablets, mobile phones, ATM, Kiosks and may be even large touchscreens. Every time a customer or a prospect is interacting with a digital device and learning more about a bank or transacting with a bank, the bank is providing an experience (even if the bank knows it or not). Whether that experience is making it easy for the customer to remember, come back, start a process, complete a process, ask for support, recommend to a friend etc. is what defines the essence of digital experience.

In other words, digital banking experience is a series of interactions a customer has on his/her digital device. Most of us would pay attention to the “series of interactions” and forget about the “customer” part. We need to look at the experience from a customer’s perspective. What’s missing in most of the digital banking experiences is the emotional aspect. We don’t need to run a Yash Raj Films musical score in the background while banking. But, are we able to empathize with our customers in a way that we can capture their intent logically and emotionally and solve it so that they can be both successful and happy after the interaction?

Why is this important? There is a huge realization that if banks don’t get their digital banking strategy and execution right, their customers might leave them for another bank that does get it right. Banks have realized that digital is a fundamental new challenge for them. It is also a huge opportunity to re-imagine customer experience. So, what does a digital banking user want or expect the bank to provide? There are many things, but we need to remember, everyone in this world has a relationship with money. And they need help to manage that relationship so as to maximize their wealth. Digital makes that possible like never before.

But, are banks ready? It all depends on how well we know our users. So, here are top 10 things a digital banking user expects based on my observations. Some of the examples and jargons used like NEFT are familiar in the Indian context. But, the principles remain the same for any global bank.

#1 Digital user has a goal to accomplish. Digital banking is pretty convenient in terms of time and effort. It beats driving to the bank and standing in line any day (nothing personal). To provide the best customer experience online, we need to know why is the user visiting the web site or mobile app? Do they want to transact, as in check balance or transfer funds or do they want to shop for loans and fixed deposits? It’s very easy to find out depending on what they choose to click (or touch). Unfortunately, there is a lot of information thrown at the user. This causes cognitive overload and the unintended effect is that the user will learn how to ignore everything except a sequence of clicks built into muscle memory to get their jobs done. So, are we helping the user get their jobs done or are we throwing hurdles along the way? Next time you login, count the number of horizontal scrolls, vertical scrolls, flashing news, ads, popups and extra pages you see on the way to checking your balance! To get this right, we need to provide relevant information based on customer intelligence. For this to happen, we need to begin with really understanding the users.

This requires deep capabilities in product management and a product mindset.

Yes, the hidden question is, so how do we market our billion other products now that we have the attention of the customer? Agreed, the website is a great channel to market new products, but we need to first focus on making the customer successful in their intended jobs.

#2 Digital user expects anytime, anywhere, anywho service. This is a very basic expectation from internet services. The beauty of digital bank is that it’s always there with the customer wherever they go and whatever the time or day of the week is. So, for example, instead of saying NEFT option of funds transfer is not possible now (after entering all the details) since its beyond office hours, how about providing the user with a workable set of options based on the time of login, from the moment they choose to transfer funds?

It was funny to find out that NEFT (before RTGS came along) couldn’t batch my requests to transfer funds beyond office hours. I recently found out NEFT and RTGS are platforms that are government owned and operated. Commercial core banking system vendors can only do with what is possible. So, the interesting bit was the online fund transfers are timed for clearance at the same time as the manual cheques! Internet runs 24×7. Think Flipkart or Google.

There are times when the user wants to communicate with the bank via their preferred option of email, facebook or twitter. It is not important who they communicate with or when but that their problem gets solved. For this to happen, banks should put in place mechanisms to create an integrated session across multiple channels of communication. Banks should also stop viewing emails, facebook or twitter as silos and have an integrated strategy in communication.

This requires deep technology platforms and robust customer data.

#3 Digital user expects banks to simplify the security process and yet keep it 100% secure. Two factor authentication is becoming the world standard for secure logins. More and more banks are deploying this measure for greater security. It is no doubt commendable that banks take our money deposited with them seriously and put strong security measures around them. Still, there are too many passwords to remember. I bet most senior citizens are writing down the passwords somewhere and reading from it. Hence, banks need to consider biometrics based logins urgently for mobile apps. Not sure if Aadhaar can verify biometrics but that’s a start for leverage.

However, there are some pretty confounding security measures followed by some banks. For example, a few banks don’t allow you to copy and paste (Ctrl-V is disabled) credit card or account numbers. In some cases, the account numbers are treated like passwords and masked. But there is another field right below that asks you to confirm the account number, which is not masked. Even OTPs are masked. I am not sure what’s the rationale behind this but isn’t it better if data doesn’t get transduced for integrity? May be someone can enlighten me behind the security use cases that demand masking every input. It will be great if banks develop a sense of graded risk tolerance. Once the user is authenticated and authorized there can be a scale down in terms of masking inputs or asking more passwords. Knowing user location can also help in grading risk tolerance. For example if the user is checking in from home it is much safer than from anywhere else outside.

A few banks want to educate the customers. Unfortunately, users have neither the time nor the inclination to read user manuals or attend workshops or watch videos just to figure out how to login! This is true for any digital service not just for banks. An eclectic mix of design and security can keep the vaults unbroken forever.

To build this capability you need to innovate rapidly or invest in a promising startup.

#4 Digital user expects that you don’t make them think. This is taking words from the title of a book by Steve Krug on how the best user experience designs don’t make the users think. This is true for even first time users. The questions in user’s minds are intuitively answered through thoughtfully designed interfaces. Getting to this point is an iterative process but this needs to be understood before growing the customer base. A very simple example is the design of choosing payees in some online banks. You are asked to remember the beneficiary id (numeric). It’s scary enough to remember your wedding anniversary. Who remembers beneficiary ids? Seriously! It’s incredibly over-engineered! I have figured out some short cuts – like for example, you can click on Search without giving any inputs and it will show you all the current payees.

Another example is interchanging the location of Change and Confirm buttons in subsequent pages in the same process flow. These are all actually hygiene factors in good design. It gets even more critical when you design mobile apps with limited real estate and shorter attention span.

Another example is NEFT, RTGS, IMPS are great technology platforms but for an average banking customer, they sound like jargons. How about showing a default (recommended option) along with other available options at the time of transaction with clear charges?

To build this capability you need a strong design organization. Banks may consider hiring a Chief Designer too!

#5 Digital user expects omnipresence. Omnipresence means being available and usable across all digital points of interaction. This is applicable for marketing channels across digital devices. A Facebook user may be looking for home loans for his/her new apartment. How can banks identify, participate in this conversation and help him/her make a decision? Are you there when the customer is looking for you? Think about rural users with feature phones. The second scenario is when the user is already a customer and needs to interact over their preferred choice of digital device. For e.g. how many users are using Windows Phone? Users would very much appreciate a consistent user experience in terms of layout, style, fonts, colors, design etc across all digital points of interaction. The third scenario is customer support when the user has a grievance and there are no easily available redressal mechanisms, the user has the power to vent on twitter letting the whole world know what a shameful service he/she is getting.

Having a presence is one thing and being effective is another thing. For example, it sounds like some banks that have twitter presence have given out a Standard Operating Procedure to their twitter reps of entrusting the responsibility of solving the customer’s problem back to the customer itself by asking them to navigate through their organizational maze. Wouldn’t it be great if these twitter issues and sentiments are also tracked and ticketed? All the bank needs to do is to link the twitter handle to the account and your twitter rep can solve the problem!

To build this omnipresence capability requires not only an integrated technology platform that bridges all silos but also an organization that is empathetic and aligned towards customers.

#6 Digital user expects “You must know me by now”. You would think that simple things like choosing “No Thanks” to downloading mobile app should be recorded but they keep showing up every single time you login! Going from fixing this to recommending the most relevant product based on my age, profession, income, savings, loans, where I live, my spend history, family information and a dozen other parameters; would be an ideal trajectory. Banks need to focus on conversions than clicks. Few and most relevant messages would be more meaningful than throwing a dozen messages and hoping for the best.

To build this capability, consider Predictive analytics and a robust customer database platform.

#7 Digital user expects that you are rethinking the WHOLE process and not just mirroring offline processes. Digitization of business processes presents a tremendous opportunity for improving efficiency. This should not be lost by simply taking the existing process with a mix of manual and semi-automated process and offering the same experience online. Digitization needs to be thought through in disruptive ways and this is certainly in the realm of several technology platforms available today. Digital needs an end-to-end perspective. For example, a few banks expect paper letters to initiate or re-initiate logins and request certain documents. It sounds like this is to ensure the person requesting is the same who owns the account but that should be obvious with a few security checks online.

To build this capability, we simply need better empathy of users that can be woven into product features and design! There may be a need to make core banking systems more open in terms of API support, but I will leave it to the experts.

#8 Digital user expects speed… and they get it! The speed of online banking is one thing that banks do get right. Speed is something that a digital user has been pampered with thanks to Google, JustDial or even online display ads served within 200 milliseconds from inMobi and the likes. Here speed should be viewed not just in terms of online site or mobile app responsiveness which is pretty good, but broadened to include overall online process duration. For example, time taken to approve a loan online or open a bank account online.

This highly engineering scalable capability is already or mostly built!

#9 Digital needs to augment hybrid experiences. Customers, retail or merchant, may need to visit a branch for various reasons. The frequency and the need may have already reduced and may further reduce. But, I think branches are not going away anytime soon. When the user visits a branch, is it possible to predict their questions given their historical pattern or an open case? How wonderful if this information was ready at the fingertips of the bank staff to satisfy the customer’s questions immediately. For example, every year around tax time, I need to make 2 visits to the branch to get a tax document. The first visit, I need to submit a written letter asking for the information and then come back the next working day. This needs to get online immediately but until then assuming regulatory procedures can this be solved in one visit? You can use the rest of the time in understanding your customer’s upcoming growth plans or life events and thereby using this opportunity to share more information about your other services (up-sell/cross-sell). This is probably the best outcome you can get out of face time!

To build this capability, bank staff needs to be equipped with customer intelligence management tools.

#10 Digital user expects you to be there for him/her. Just like personal relationship banking, digital doesn’t take away the need for the user to know a human on the other side. Adding a human relationship element in the world of bits and bytes is going to be a key differentiating factor in a bank’s success. The scope and quality of the conversation needs to be reconsidered once the basic transactional experiences are taken care of.

To build this capability, you just need good leadership!

In summary, be bold to put customer success first. WhatsApp founders were bold to say no to ads and the result is a super clean interface that is simple and powerful. In the words of Steve Jobs, Simplify, simplify, simplify and hide the complexity behind this simplification. It is not the customer’s job to understand how we work. It is our (as in the creator/service provider’s) job to understand what customers need and deliver value. To re-imagine a superior customer experience we need a holistic approach that spans business, products, design technology, analytics, marketing, support and most importantly new skill sets for the people who run and represent your banks.

What do you think?

To know more how you can go about building these capabilities and to improve customer experiences, email [email protected].

The author is the founder of Pravi Solutions, an Innovation and Marketing Consultancy enriching digital experiences!

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‘I initiate therefore I am’ – Success mantra for the 21st century

If you don’t have a high degree of initiative, you don’t have much of a future in the corporate world. 

17th century philosopher Rene Descartes said – ‘I think therefore I am’. With all due respect to him, I am inclined to revise this for the 21st century as – ‘I initiate therefore I am’.

For me the world is truly binary, people who take initiatives and people who don’t and that pretty much decides who survives the marathon and who doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t want to discount the value of thought because the very act of doing has its roots in a thought. However, in the modern world, taking the initiative to execute matters much more than just penning a thought on – is what needs to be done.

Before we delve deeper, let’s be clear on the definition of initiative. If you look on the net, you will find many interpretations, but for this write-up, I define initiative as not accepting status-quo and exploring ways to make things better. People who take an initiative are always working for the betterment of their own self, their family, their organization and the society at large. People who don’t are on the receiving end and perpetually complaining about the state of affairs.

If you don’t have a high degree of initiative, you don’t have much of a future in the corporate world. At the very base level, a manager expects you to take an initiative and think of possible solutions, rather than just report the problem to him.

If you are someone who has tried potential solutions, in whatever limited manner, and made an assessment on the impact, you are sure to stand out and win your manager’s trust. On the other hand, if you are very reluctant to stretch yourself and believe that you have done the needful by reporting the problem, believe me – you are the problem and your manager is better off without you. Think of it this way – the problem will anyway get reported to the manager, sooner or later…why does he need you for reporting only?

You can’t rise in the corporate hierarchy, if you haven’t demonstrated a very high level of initiative all along your career, essentially in each and every role you played. I am not saying that taking initiatives is enough to reach the corner office, you will need many more qualities, but initiative is the key ingredient here. If you are in an organization, where people are recognized more for politics played than the initiatives taken, trust me that you are falling into a pit. Neither the organization will go anywhere and nor will your career!

If you are an entrepreneur who lacks initiatives and is in the habit of procrastination, you are really a day dreamer! You can only dream of making it big because entrepreneurship, by its very nature, is all about taking initiatives at a neck breaking pace. As a founder, you are solving some industry problem which has never been solved, or even thought of before you. In the process, you are treading zillions of parallel paths, always ascertaining what works and what doesn’t work for you.

Every start-up begins with a great idea but a large majority fail. Why? Because the venture didn’t took enough initiatives to reach the sweet spot – where your product offerings, customer requirement and go-to-market converge. The founding team gets fixated with success from early adopters and gets into an execution mode, trying to do the same thing better and better hoping for repeat success. They don’t realise that the reasons for which the masses adopt a product are radically different from the reasons for which early adopters try the product. Initiatives, which should have been taken right after initial few successes to nail down the strategy for mass adoption, take a back seat.

Here’s an important observation before I close. I have seen people having a high level of initiative in the early years and then the drive tapers down. A few initiatives leading to a dead end, others which didn’t deliver as you expected and some others which were laughed at by the peers…and all this takes a toll on your motivation.You prefer to go down the beaten path now as it appears predictable and gives you that false sense of security.

But that’s exactly what it is – false.

I am a staunch believer – Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“There comes a moment when you have to stop revving up the car and shove it into gear.” — David Mahoney

Guest Post by Suresh Kabra, a leadership and business development professional with a proven track record in driving new initiatives. Kabra is a technopreneur and a MIT- Sloan and BITS Pilani alumni. He has a patent on flexible display design. 

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Leadership Attitude

In this cutthroat and competitive business environment it has become imperative for both new and established organizations to be on top of their game. Staying constantly in top form and delivering results requires the organization to have people in the management with strong leadership skills. These people are even more important for companies that are yet to make their mark in the market.

As part of our initiative to support the growth of start-ups and encourage them in their endeavours, we had recently conducted a roundtable on Leadership Attitude – to understand and discuss what makes a good leader – one that people would willingly follow?

In response, our team came up with the following attitudes of a leader – that all those aspiring to lead must imbibe and also pass on to their teams to ensure that their venture is successful.

Know your worth – All successful people have a healthy self esteem and know what they are worth. They neither take nor behave in an unacceptable manner with anyone. Amongst all, this quality that gives rise to self belief and confidence in one’s ability is the most important one.

A to-do list – To make sure that their day is productive, leaders plan to do the most important work in the first two hours of the day i.e. they apply the Pareto principle – which suggests that one must give importance to the 20% of the tasks that generate 80% of the results.

Clear work schedule and follow up – Leaders have a well prepared work schedule for all the tasks that they want to achieve, they set clear deadlines for these tasks and regularly follow up on it – approximately in four to six weeks.

Compulsory savings – Savings come in handy during those rainy days or ‘periods of recession’ and are important both for individuals and organizations. Successful people ensure that they compulsorily save at least 10% of their income every month.

Develop intuition – Successful leaders not only use the data and information available to them but also their intuition – gut feeling, to make decisions. According to the book blink – by Malcolm Gladwell, which is about rapid cognition – the rate of success for decisions taken based on gut feeling or intuition is 60% and 40% for those decisions that are arrived at by following a logical thought process.

Clear definition of success – Success is a very relative term. What one person considers as successful may only be a small achievement or goal for another. Leaders have a clear understanding of what success means to them.

Cultivate kindness – It is important that in a hurry to win this never ending race of achievements we do not overlook the importance of or forget basic human qualities. All successful people have a strong sense of empathy and they consciously practice kindness of word and of deed. Along with this these people are trust worthy, act with integrity, are approachable and most importantly they are likeable.

Take risks – Success is part dependent on our ability to take risks and work out of our comfort zones. Opportunities often come disguised as risks, threats or challenges, which if evaded have the capacity to become regrets. So, to avoid falling into the trap of ‘what if’ thinking and holding regrets– cultivate a habit of at least taking some calculated risks.

Practice meditation – All successful people practice the art of meditation. This technique helps them keep calm and think clearly when faced with adverse or challenging situations.

Learn to apply the correct response to stress inducing situations – There are four major reactions that occur in instances of perceived harm or attack – fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. A successful person knows how to judge a situation and react according to it. For e.g. if it can be fought – then stay and fight. If the situation is more powerful than you – then retreating or flight response does not make you any weaker.

Know your personality type and that of your core team – For an organization to be successful, it is important that the core team is made up of people with different core strengths that complement each other. Leaders have the basic knowledge of personality types and also the weakness and strength of each type. This knowledge helps them build a strong and competitive team with a multitude of skills. They have also perfected or nearly perfected the person-job fit in their organizations.

Ability to take tough decisions – This is one quality on which a lot of success is dependent on. Leaders should be able to set aside their emotions and take decisions for the larger good of their people and company.

Above par people skills – Leaders now that a lot of their success depends on how they communicate with the people who work for them. They use respect and tact in all their communication so as to ensure that no one goes away feeling hurt or humiliated. The best leaders work on building relationships with the people who work for them by ensuring that they now their names, a bit about their families and for the immediate team – their goals and aspirations. These small pieces of information go a long way in building a strong and motivated team.

The God complex – Leaders know that they are not shielded from failure. They do not let their successes to get to their heads and develop a false sense of self or haughtiness.

They do not take rejection personally – Leaders know the rules of the game; they do not take rejection from investors, market or the public personally. Instead they work harder and smarter to acquire the required support.

Networking – Leaders are expert networkers – they spend adequate time on meeting and cultivating relationships with people whom they would want to work with or those whom they would like to do business with in the future.

They believe in Karma – What you sow is what you reap and what goes around comes around – are the two mantras that leaders live by.

This list is just the tip of the iceberg called Leadership, but it’ll help you to get a head start on building the awesome team most organizations would wage a war for. Start with these and build your own definitions and mantras to aid your journey in building a successful and enduring venture. We’re always there to support 🙂

Guest Post Contributed by Praveen Singh, 99Tests

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Cheap Kills, Value Wins!

Competing on price is never a great strategy! Cheap Kills, Value Wins! As long you as you have a clearly differentiated offering, you should calculate the value your solution provides your users, and base your pricing on that! And stick to it! Competing on price creates a spiral of death for all competitors, no matter what the industry, no matter what the offerings are!

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Some eons ago, in one of the services start-ups I was with, prospects always brought up a competitor that offered better prices. Why just one? I usually volunteer to provide them an even larger list of competitors that can give them better raw pricing than me. Then I bring up the value of our higher priced offerings and how, over the course of the project, our total costs will  be lower for them, given the superiority of our hiring, training processes, and the higher productivity of our resources.

In another software product startup, we knew that many of our customers tried developing a solution in-house to solve the same problem and failed. We knew that in-house applications will not scale up as well as a carefully designed software product. Our product had the benefit of addressing  a larger variety of problems with all of our customers. And so every customer gets to benefit from better features, rapid customizability and scalability. We priced our offering at high US product prices; they were based on value provided rather than something that is worked from costs up!  We knew we had defensible intellectual property that cannot be easily replicated by any other competitor!

Perils of Competing on Price

Competing on price does not mean that you don’t provide strategically offered discounts on the total price to close a sale quickly.  It means that the only thing that differentiates you from your closest competitor is price and price alone. This is a terrible situation, not just for you, but all of your competitors also. Here are the perils of competing on price:

  • Inflexibility in the Contract – Competing on price does not allow for acquisition of other technologies, products, or people to make the overall effort more efficient and effective. Especially in product companies, a smaller competitor may have developed a product that fits in well with your offering when integrated properly.
  • Tight Margins – Murphy’s Law happens! Key people may leave, unforeseen things may happen at a company. Competing on price and tight margins can turn a marginally profitable opportunity into a loss-making effort.
  • Compromises future people and product development – The margins you make are not just for profits. A large portion of the margins are the monies you have left to be used for continued development of the people you have, or continued product research and development. Competing on price may force you to cut down on these strategic investments.
  • Sets up the wrong dynamic with the customer – The best time to set up a proper dynamic on Pricing with customers is right at the beginning. If you get the contract because you competed on price you have already set up a terrible dynamic. You may never be able to recover from this later on.

Steps towards Competing on Value

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Competing on Value is a careful, long journey and requires faith, patience and a lot more hard work. But when set up correctly, and if the value is proven with a handful of customers, scaling up to a larger customer base is easier. Here are some absolutely essential steps towards Value-Based Pricing:

  • Calculate and Have Ready, Demonstrable Value – First principle of Value Based pricing is to understand, calculate and have ready at your fingertips, your Value. Return on Investment (ROI) calculations, Pay Back Periods, Projected Total Cost of Ownership of alternative solutions are all necessary for you to demonstrate Value.  You need to have them ready even in your initial presentations. Tell them how you may appear more expensive than their other alternatives, but demonstrate how your solution will save them money, effort and time in the long run.
  • Differentiate your offering and Value – Make sure you have defensible intellectual property either in the form of patentable technology or at least a large body of complex code that will take a competitor a long time to figure out and develop. Companies underestimate the value of time in these comparisons. That’s why large software product companies routinely make the buy decision to acquire a smaller, nimbler competitor that provides a part of their overall solution rather than develop it all from scratch themselves.
  • Highlight your plans to add even more Value –  Share some of your future people or product development directions with your prospects and customers. Demonstrate how your plans will enable their investment in you will benefit them in the longer run even more. This will also have the added benefit of getting you feedback on what’s critical for them and what’s not. You will be able to fine tune your own future directions before you spend money on them, a kind of Lean Fine-Tuning!
  • Demonstrate Thought Leadership, don’t be in reactive mode – Whether you are providing software services or software products, thought leadership is a terrific way to demonstrate and provide added value. If you are doing Big Data Analytics products, share with prospects and customers, the thought leadership kinds of activities you are doing in that area. They need to look up to you as an informed, thought leading business expert; not a service or a product supplier. Those are the tools with which you add value.

Competing on Price is a losing proposition. Nobody wins and all competitors including you will be in a downward spiral with that strategy. On the other hand Value-based Pricing when done correctly can facilitate a longer term, mutually beneficial partnership with your customers. When done correctly, it enables you to defend and build your business with your customers and help grow your company in the process!

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get – Warren Buffett

 

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IT: Enhancing Healthcare for a Better Quality of Life

Information Technology has successfully reshaped our lives in ways unimaginable even a decade or two ago. The era of the telegram is now officially over and access to information is not just at our doorsteps but at our finger tips, due to the availability of communication tools like cellular phones, computers and the internet. It is no wonder then that technology has played a key role in healthcare as well and has the potential to completely change the way we deal with a disease at various stages.

The current government rightly focuses on using technology to improve the dismal standards of basic healthcare, not just for the urban population but also for people living in rural settings in remotest corners of ‘Bharat’ which is home to almost 70 percent of our country’s population. Evidence from national and international data clearly shows that the effective use of ICT in healthcare can improve access to better quality services, reduce costs, and empower doctors as well as patients. India has been aggressively experimenting with IT in healthcare, with notable progress in ‘m-health’, ‘tele-medicine’ and ‘e-health’. Many of these services are ready to take the next step and be scaled up to achieve their true potential. The use of IT in healthcare can be the first big step in improving the primary healthcare network in the country.

Simultaneously, it is also important to tap the energy of the private providers of healthcare services in India. Some estimates suggest that by 2012, private sector comprised 80 percent of the healthcare providers in India as against 8 percent at the time of independence. Traditionally, the private and public healthcare sectors in India have viewed each other with mistrust, and to get them to work in tandem is not an easy task. Efforts need to be made towards building confidence and fostering cooperation. This is where the true advantage of IT lies. Technology is available to doctors in both the sectors and can be used for notifying, reporting and following up on medical cases.

Take the issue of Tuberculosis in India, which accounts for more than 25 percent of the new TB cases worldwide. This contagious airborne disease kills almost 2.4 lakh Indians every year and is among the top four causes of death in adults. The Revised National TB Control Program (RNTCP) provides mechanisms to ensure treatment adherence monitoring and support, but these currently reach patients treated by the public sector. Inappropriate, inadequate and unmonitored care could lead to treatment failure, recurrent TB, and most devastatingly the development of drug resistant TB. Hence, proper mechanisms for awareness and monitoring for all TB patients, whether publicly or privately-treated, become all the more important.

In 2012, RNTCP launched e-NIKSHAY, a case-based and web-based reporting and recording system that would act as a centralized avenue for data collection of TB cases; aiding state and local systems to track the progress of patients and keep all the stakeholders in the loop. Over the last 6 months, in the Mehsana, Mumbai and Patna pilot Urban-TB projects, such IT- based systems have helped issue over 10,000 drug vouchers for privately-treated TB patients, and linked those patients to improved treatment monitoring and support. Total TB case notification in these districts, including public and private, has improved significantly demonstrating its success and importance. Increased transparency and monitoring leads to better planning and accountability.

The main reason behind the success of any IT application is its user friendly attribute. It is time to reach out to private practitioners with easy-to-use applications that take minimum time, and yield maximum value to providers and their patients. The most basic yet powerful communication device, the mobile phone, which is used by over 70 percent of Indians, will help us penetrate in the remotest corners of the country. This device can help extensively in increasing the reporting of cases and keeping a close watch on patient who often skip medicine. The Union Government’s recent launch of an initiative to maintain an electronic treatment record of TB patients by encouraging them to send a missed call notification on a number printed behind the strip of the drug is a classic example of how reporting and follow up can be done without involving significant extra cost and effort. This will help the treatment provider to intervene at the right time in case the patient misses a dose.

Training and education in e-healthcare plays the most crucial role in the implementation of these projects. For this purpose the Indian Council of Medical Research has made an open access online bibliography and there are hospitals which have collaborated with universities to teach certificate courses in telemedicine.

India is a leader in innovation, research and IT. It is important that this innovation potential and its resources are harnessed to combat India’s healthcare challenges. If we truly want to improve access to healthcare and sustain it, we need to scale up such innovative new practices by providing adequate resources and encouraging the appropriate skill-development. It’s time for us to move beyond working for IT and start making IT work for us.

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Announcing the second edition of iSPIRT’s index of the top 30 B2B software companies in India! 

We believe this index adds an important objective component to the discussion on the emerging B2B software industry in India and shines a spotlight on an under-reported sector to drive policy, entrepreneurship and advocacy.The first edition of the iSPIxB2B index was published six months ago – the report and blog post are here.  We got numerous press mentions, including in the Economic Times, Hindu and Tech in Asia, and a lot of tweet love.

So now we need your help: please recommend and put us in touch with any strong B2B software companies that you know that meet the following criteria.

  • the company sells software (such as marketing automation or storage infrastructure) to businesses on a license or subscription basis OR provides a B2B service (such as an ad-tech platform) driven through a differentiated software offering
  • the company was founded in India or has co-founders who were/are based in India
  • the company has $5M (Rs 30cr) or more in annualized revenue and/or is worth more than $25M (Rs 150cr)
Just fill in the fields in the form or you can email us at ispix(at)ispirt.in
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Business Software Discovery made easier by SoftwareSuggest.com!

SoftwareSuggest.com is India’s leading business software discovery and recommendation platform. Product Nation interviewed Ankit Dudhwewala, co-founder and CEO of the company to understand their journey thus far. Read on…

SoftwaresuggestHow did you hit upon the idea of SoftwareSuggest?

The idea of providing a software discovery platform came about on account of my own prior experiences. In my earlier stint at a mid-sized pharma company, we spent close to about 3 years and multiple iterations to finalize the right ERP software for our firm. The entire process drained us out on all fronts, and at the end, we still did not have the right software solution that met our needs. This experience of mine made me understand that lakhs of similar buyers in India face the same problems that I faced. I sensed that there was no single place where a buyer would be able to reliably understand the software offering, compare different vendor solutions and get feedback/input on best practices of deploying software solutions. On the sellers’ end too, I figured out that such a platform would help them build their sales pipeline and gain credibility in the marketplace. Hence, we started SoftwareSuggest.com in 2014.

What has been your learning thus far? What worked well for you, and what did not?

In terms of positives, our hunch that there is an unmet need related to listing, reviewing and selection of software solutions both from the buyer and the vendor side was very quickly validated. Within 2 months, we had enough traction that helped us in validation of our idea. As more and more queries came from both buyers and vendors, we were able to scale up and provide a categorized listing, review and consulting option for both parties. This has resulted in us listing over 2000 software solutions from various vendors, across business functions, and over 1500 customers using the platform to review their software needs on this platform.

I think this scale and acceptance of the platform has been achieved primarily because we have been very conscious of quality of solution offering while on boarding our vendors and at the same time, have a good customer service mechanism for prospective buyers evaluating a software solution buy. In just about a year, we have good working partnerships with key SME software vendors, for whom we have been valuable in generating qualified leads, resulting in quicker sales of their software offerings. For the customer, our free consulting services, coupled with a converged list of qualified vendors implies that overall time and effort spent in evaluation, purchase and deployment of software solution is greatly reduced. This has been the key factors aiding our success thus far.

As regards to areas we could have done better, I think during our initial months of operation, we did not do a good job in advising a few of our prospective buyers, not to proceed forward in search for a software solution. These set of prospective buyers were just trying to mimic other colleagues in their line of business, but did not fully understand how to use software solutions to their benefit. We spent enormous amount of time to make these set of customers realize that they were not yet ready for software adoption. Looking back, I now feel that we could have dealt with them better.

There are global players who offer such software discovery platform elsewhere. What do you do differently from them, and why?

I agree that there are a few known names who offer similar kind of platform in the developed countries. However, one needs to understand that what works there will not necessarily work as is, in the Indian scenario. While at a macro level, our platform and other existing platforms may appear to provide the same functionality, the differentiation is in the level of details.

India, as an emerging economy has its own nuances. The variety of small businesses in the country, the diverse range of awareness of small business owners in understanding the value of software, the approach of evaluation of vendors, and so many other aspects are very unique and different in India. Since we understand these nuances more intimately than any other existing vendor, we are able to cater to these needs, and hence get better satisfaction levels from buyers as well as sellers, who use our platform.

Great insights! As a last question, can you share with us top three things that you have learnt working with Indian customers, that other fellow product entrepreneurs could benefit from?

I cannot say if this is true for all products/services targeting Indian customers, but, in our case, we have been very clear that our business model should not look at charging the customers, when they come to evaluate different software options. All of our revenue come from our partnerships with vendors, as of now. It is our firm belief that the more and more we enable our buyers, our platform will get further strengthened and be of more value.

Secondly, I think there are lots of opportunities, similar to ours, where in many challenges faced by Indian customers can be alleviated to an extent – by streamlining the processes via platforms. We just are solving the pain points of software discovery and evaluation for the Indian customers. I believe there is scope for other product entrepreneurs to look at areas where ease of doing business can be enhanced.

Lastly, just the sheer size of the Indian market and the demographics make it worthwhile for product entrepreneurs to look at India as a market to offer products that solve local needs. There are already a few success stories here, but I believe these are just the tip of the iceberg. There is unlimited opportunity for the product entrepreneurs to make a difference!

Product Nation thanks Ankit for his time and wishes him many more successes in their venture!

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Inflexion – Technology Summit: An evening of insights and observations

I was invited to “Inflexion” an event organized by Signal Hill and iSPIRT. The duo have in the past co-created the report on Technology M&A in India (link) which was very educational, so my interest was piqued and decided to go.

The evening was started by Scott Wieler, Chairman & CEO Signal Hill. He mentioned that $6.9Bn of VC/PE money has been invested in India in last four years (2011-14). However, the M&A value generated is just $1.7Bn. So with a value creation ratio of 0.2x, India is far behind US (3.0x) and Israel (5.3x). This led to the insight that M&A values will need to increase by more than 15x over next 3-6 years for this ratio to catch up to US and Israel levels. My hope is recent acquisitions by Flipkart (Myntra), Snapdeal (Unicommerce), Facebook (Little Eye Labs) and Twitter (ZipDial) – are good trend in this direction, and we will see a lot of action happening in next couple of years. This augurs well for Indian entrepreneurs.

Next came the retrospective by N.R.K. Raman – co-founder of i-FLEX Solutions. Very interestingly his company was probably the first VC/PE backed unicorn in India! They were bought by Oracle for nearly a billion dollars. A lot of i-FLEX’s story was about perseverance and street smarts. We keep on talking about product-market fit – this was a phenomenon written all over i-FLEX’s success. The founders were working in the banking software industry inside a bank (Citigroup) – and understood the inefficiencies of the system. They jumped the boat, separated from the mothership (albeit Citi wrote them their first $400k) – and launched a product that found ready takers in the market. It was not the dramatic high burn, breakneck growth story but rather a well thought out, methodical plan executed with hard work and business fundamentals kind of story.

As the night became young, Flipkart’s co-founder Binny Bansal and YourStory’s Shradha Sharma, stepped onto the stage. Binny said that the one thing keeping him awake at night is “finding high quality talent and retaining them” – interesting to note that the big guys have still the same challenges as newbie startups. As an investor, I feel it is becoming very competitive to hire good talent. That one perfect designer or product manager you have found – chances are will have multiple offers in hand, if not thinking about doing his own startup already. The other big focus area that Binny mentioned was mobile – if you look at the data, I think the writing is on the wall – by 2016 – 80%+ of India’s internet population will access Internet more by mobiles than by desktop and my guess is 60%+ of India’s internet population will have never accessed internet using desktop. So Flipkart’s worries are talent and mobile.

Then Sharad Sharma, iSPIRT co-founder and Governing Council member, delivered a short punchy talk. He explained how small sub $50m dollar exits are the lifeblood of any tech ecosystem. Unless they happen in enough numbers we won’t get Billion dollar exits in the long haul. I learnt that iSPIRT’s M&A Connect program has been instrumental in getting Facebook, Corporate Executive Board, Yahoo, Intuit and Twitter become first acquirers in India! The M&A Connect program is now on a one-acquisition-a-month run-rate and aspires to get to a one-acquisition-a-week rate in the coming years. What an inspiring story of volunteer magic changing our ecosystem for the better!

Sharad then talked about global SaaS startups. They are gaining momentum. He also outlined why software product startups targeting Indian SMEs will be big in the coming three years.

We then broke for drinks and dinner. The book “Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere”, authored by Ravi Venkatesan, iSPIRT Adviser and former Chairman of Microsoft India, was gifted to attendees of the event. It promises to be an interesting read.

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Announcing the top global CIO’s/CTO’s for InTech50 2015

It only gets better …

We are proud and happy to share the names of the CIO’s and CTO’s – the best that the tech world has to offer – globally.

And we will do it right here, in Bangalore.

In three weeks from now, high on our success from last year, we will again showcase carefully and diligently selected 50 tech companies from India, to a congregation of CIO’s – who have changed the tech scene in their own respective companies. Visionaries and experienced, they will interact and deep dive into what these 50 startups have to offer, thereby creating credibility for these startups through their support and validation.

Through a strict and comprehensive selection process, our eminent jury has already declared the first 20 finalists of InTech50 2015. We will announce the remaining 30 shortly.

Here is whom they can expect to interact and hobnob with during InTech50 2015 –

Encouraged by the overwhelming response from the startup community, we look forward to closely working with them and are committed give India its rightful place under the sun as a ‘product nation.’

Guest Post by Arvind Kochhar, Co-Host, InTech50

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Great Tech Rocketships (GTRS) to the UK – a UKTI, Tech Hub UK and iSPIRT initiative

Great Tech Rocketships to the UK is an initiative by UKTI to assist companies from India that would like to do business in, with or from the UK.

(UKTI, or UK Trade & Investment, is a UK Government department whose mandate is to assist UK based businesses in their overseas expansion, and also encourage the best overseas companies to look to the UK as their global partner of choice.)

UKTI chose TechHub, a London & Bangalore based co-working facility, and iSPIRT as their key partners to implement this program on the ground.

iSPIRT saw this as an ideal platform to encourage and assist Indian software product companies go global. According to Sharad Sharma, “The Rocketships initiative is another significant step forward in the journey to create a product nation here in India. It was a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with TechHub and UKTI to provide a platform for high-potential companies in India to explore global markets.”

GTRS is intended to be a long-term initiative for creating a platform, to assist high-potential companies from India, explore UK as a destination to do business, in, with or from.

The initiative launched was an interesting competition wherein 5 high-potential startups were selected from nearly 300 applicants, and are now on their way for a one-week sponsored tour of the innovation hubs in UK.

The program was launched at a packed event at Tech Hub’s Bangalore centre on the 3rd of Feb. Our call for entries was an application form, with a one-minute video pitch. We connected with a lot of companies – through social media, emails, and even personal phone calls. The response we got was overwhelming. In the last four weeks that we launched and called for entries, we received nearly 300 entries from companies across India. What was most satisfying was that 55 of these companies scored 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 5, and 25 companies scored 3, indicating an overall high quality of software product companies across India.

A jury comprising of Sharad Sharma, Mohandas Pai, Stewart Noakes, Dr. Vicky Pope, and Dr. Chris Moore, selected the winners from a list drawn from among the 61 companies that were shortlisted to present at Demo Nights held across 5 cities – Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Delhi.

With rigorous effort and comprehensive screening, we are proud to showcase the following 5 companies as the finalists of the first leg of the Great Tech Rocketships to the UK initiative –

  • Frilp – The quickest way to access the local knowledge of your friends and our experts.
  • Agrima Infotech – Development. Design. Online Marketing.
  • Talview – Talview is a pioneer and leader in video based assessments. It has more than 1000 clients across the globe from startups to Fortune 100 and have completed more than a million video responses across 102 countries.
  • Tonetag – ToneTag allows easy, frictionless & secure proximity payments using soundwaves (Tone) or NFC (Tag) and enables Contactless experience on any device
  • Congruent Technologies – Multi-national IT-solutions Corporation, with deep domain expertise in the financial services, healthcare, education and e-retail verticals

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The winners gets –

  • A week-long trip to UK, that includes flights, accommodation
  • Deep-dived interaction with world class investors, incubation hubs and science tech parks
  • Guided tour of Tech City, Europe’s most vibrant innovation hub
  • Network with like-minded entrepreneurs, start-ups, research scholars and pioneering companies

Also, the Founders of each of the shortlisted companies will be further empowered in their endeavor, by way of a year’s membership (Flex) from TechHub, which will enable them to leverage the global network and support system, thereby fast-tracking their journey of going global.

Long-term impact

While these 5 companies were shortlisted as the winners, iSPIRT is committed to guide companies that have the potential & desire to go global, and UKTI is committed to assist in anyway they can in the company’s journey to the UK.

iSPIRT is glad to have developed a strong working relationship with UKTI, Tech Hub, and through them we are now better connected with the entrepreneurial eco-system in UK.

There are several programs and incentives that are available from the UK Government, and UKTI not only can provide you information about these programs but can also assist companies in accessing programs that may be relevant to them.

As iSPIRT, we would love to see Indian software product companies go global. Great Tech Rocketships to the UK is one significant initiative which will help iSPIRT provide deserving companies a facilitated access to UK, thus paving a path for their European and global expansion.

Should you be interested in knowing about opportunities in the UK, or if you are keen on exploring what the opportunities in UK are, drop us a line at gtrs(at)ispirt.in. Wherever relevant, we will be happy to connect you with our contacts at UKTI and Tech Hub.

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Here’s how India’s “Product Nation” ambition be achieved and what the Budget can do for that ambition

The Next Google, Made in India

If you look at the Indian business landscape, you will see several successful services companies in fields like airlines (e.g. Jet, Indigo), health care (e.g. Apollo, Manipal), mobile phone services (e.g. Idea, Airtel) and IT Services (e.g. TCS, Infosys). Many of these companies are comparable to global peers, if not potential world beaters. What we don’t have are the corresponding product companies. We don’t have an aircraft maker like Boeing, a pharma company like Pfizer, a network equipment company like Cisco, or a software product company like Microsoft.

Is this is a problem? Yes. Because Boeing and Airbus alone generate almost as much profit as all global airlines put together. Pfizer’s profits are more than the profits of top 100 hospitals in US. Cisco’s profits are more than those of all European mobile operators. Microsoft generates more profit that the profits of top 20 pure-play global IT Services firms. Take a moment to digest that and it becomes clear that if India remains bereft of product companies, it won’t be a sustainable economy in the future.

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Building product companies is hard, to be sure. Despite the fanfare, Tata Motors’ Nano has failed. And, sadly, Bajaj has been humbled by Honda in the last two years. In high-tech, Ittiam, despite its success in developing core intellectual property in online video, hasn’t broken into the main league. And, with our borders open to global competition, is it too far fetched to imagine that in a few years Amazon would have pipped Flipkart and Uber, not Ola, would rule our roads? We may have Indian players serving our digital consumers, but most categories might be dominated by foreign companies. Google already owns our search, Skype owns voice messaging, Facebook owns social media.

Is India destined to lose all these battles? Maybe not! But if we have to win, we have to embrace a new gameplan. Products, especially software products, are a winner-take-all business. Either you win or you are a nobody. Its not a place for the faint hearted.

In fact, tentativeness translates into a loss. It leads to sub-critical investments. We are staring at a costly example of this in the nuclear reactor industry right now. India can build 700 MW reactors. But economies of scale now kick-in at 1600 MW. Since we didn’t invest enough in the last 20 years (despite a wonderful start that Homi Bhabha gave us in 1950s), we are not a player in this large-reactor segment. So we will spend more on buying these bigger reactors from France, Russia and US in the next three years than what we have spent on our entire nuclear industry in the past 50 years! This is a really expensive failure.

If this was a one-off case it would still be okay. It is unfortunately not. In telecom, despite CDOT, CDAC and Sam Pitroda, we have only created one Tejas Networks, a nifty networking start-up from Bangalore. But, guess what? Tejas gets a pidly 1% of the annual telecom capex buys in the country. Rest is imported. We have a big rail network but no rail equipment companies. We are a generic drugs superpower but limp when it comes to new drug discoveries. These failures to create product winners don’t even faze us. We pretend it doesn’t matter.

We don’t even introspect why this is the case. When one sets out to create the world’s best hospital, airline or IT Services company, one builds in layers over years. But building a world class product company needs a different mindset. You have go all-in and bet-the-company on market or technology shift that is underway. This mindset is new to us in India. Our success in building services companies comes in the way. We have to accept this Provenance Effect; it is subtle yet significant.

To be sure, we are not the only victims of this effect. Taiwan is a victim of this too. It isn’t a player in mobile phones, ironically, because its design services legacy holds it back. Venezuela is not able to crack the chocolate market. El Ray owns the high end cocoa market, a key raw ingredient in chocolate, but comes up a cropper in high chocolates. If you ask the Belgians or Swiss, they tell you that they are a chocolate nation because they don’t have the cocoa mindset. Lack of a services industry legacy helps not just Korea but also Estonia (created Skype) and Finland (land of Nokia and Angry Bird games). It turns out that mindset matters — big time!

We have to jettison two ideas that hold us back from becoming a Product Nation! The first one is rather simple. We have to accept that no matter how well-run Indigo Airlines is it’ll not become a Embraer or Boeing. Similarly, a Narayana Hrudayalaya hospital will never bring a drug to market like a Pfizer does. Airtel or Verizon will never build a router like Cisco or Juniper do. And TCS will never be a Microsoft. Acknowledging this plain reality is the first step that we must take.

Then, we must discard our mentality of unbridled greed and reluctance to make bets — best showcased in our penchant for large Olympics contingents. Nobody cares about how many athletes you send to a sports competition, they only care about the number of medals you won. To improve odds of winning, small focussed efforts produce better results than grandiose schemes. Today, we have four times more new startups than Israel for one-sixth the outcomes. One reason is that the ecosystem enablers are narrowly sector focussed in Israel. The accelerators that help medical device companies don’t work with cyber-security start-ups there. Can’t we have a sector-focussed approach in India aiming at solar energy or medical devices, to name just two promising areas to bet on? If someone needs proof of concept: look at our performance in badminton and wrestling in India in recent years. The enablers in these sports are game-specific. Anything that smells like a generic “startup” program will have a low impact. It quite likely to be a scam!

Software product entrepreneurs when they are successful make a big economic impact in this winner-take-all world. So they are being courted worldwide. US is trying to get the Startup Visas in place for them. Canada already has a working program. Singapore has startup tax exemption. UK is in the game too. In our last budget there was a tantalizing line about “a special focus on software product startups”. Nine months have passed and nothing material has happened yet. Maybe this new budget will bring some well thought-out policies to light. This year 75% of newly funded software product startups will redomicile themselves in Singapore or US (up from 54% last year).

It is time for India to wake up to our Product Nation imperative. It is an opportunity for the NDA government to write history again. In 1998, they introduced a 108 point policy for IT services and we have the benefits around us to see. Now, they must do the same for software products. For the first time in modern India’s history, we have a chance to create world-winning products from India. The decisions we take today to support our flight to become a Product Nation will decide whether tomorrow’s Google, Viagra,Facebook, or Uber come from our nation. Act now.

Jointly written by Mohandas Pai & Sharad Sharma for Economic Times. 

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NEED FOR CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

Today’s competitive market is reducing margins and driving enterprises from customer acquisition to customer retention approach. The need of the hour is customer centricity, to create products around customer needs.

Telecom service providers, unlike online industries like Amazon, Apple, Google and eBay, store customer data in silos due to the inherent complexities in the service portfolio. This in turn impedes 360 degree view of the customer and adversely impacts customer loyalty.

“There were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing …”

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, at Techonomy Conference 2010

The first step towards customer centricity is to break these silos and transform them to a unified platform that gives a 360 degree view of customer data and then pool all customer data into a central warehouse that maps different lines of businesses to a customer.

“The teams merged but the systems didn’t, so from the outside it looks like a merged company, but from the inside we see a mobile customer, a TV customer, an Internet customer, but sometimes they can all be the same person.”

Martin Péronnet, Monaco Telecom CEO, from www.totaltele.com

The second step is to use this unified platform to deliver customer knowledge that will be used by marketing to send relevant offers for up-sell and cross-sell. Further, you will have to move into interactive operations by identifying customers (based on daily usage)who are prone to move to another operator. These customers are given personalized and relevant offers to retain them. The final step is to align all departments in using the consolidated customer data in their day to day operations to provide a superior customer experience.

Customer centricity is not about replacing your existing systems, but it is simply a realignment of your processes for business agility and operational efficiency.

Reference
What customers really want. (n.d.). Retrieved January 27, 2015, from www.rolandberger.com

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Microsoft Windows 10 needs more than an oil-change, it needs an overhaul.

The author extrapolates learnings from the last ten years of the Indian Automotive industry and makes the point that all things remaining equal, success in emerging markets depends largely on how premium a design feels in the hands and eyes of consumers. He suggests that Microsoft adopt a bold and fresh approach in the redesign of Windows 10.

I have been using Microsoft Windows since 1990, i.e. for over 25 years. I have also been associated with Windows beta programs and have had the chance to see a preview of Windows 95 way back in 1993.

Today, I use Windows 8 at work, at home, on my tablet and on my phone

You can read a little more about my interests here.

It’s evident that Windows 8 has not been the gushing success that Microsoft thought it would be with consumers i.e. people who have a choice of personal home and desktop computing platforms. Corporates in most cases do not have a choice but people do and I believe they have spoken by staying away from the platform.

My urgency for writing this article is the upcoming Windows 10 Preview that Microsoft is expected to show to the world on January 21st, 2015. And while I don’t expect them to turn their ship overnight, in the 6 – 9 months running up to their launch in mid to late 2015 I can only hope Microsoft can make some adjustments to its design keeping in mind the sensibilities of a billion Indians. And why just Indians? I think this can apply to a consumer in any part of the world.

I ran my own digital and web design team for 6 years in the mid – late 1990’s, a time when the closed Indian consumer market was just opening up to brands. It was an exciting time and it taught me that traditional “European and American” aesthetics do not always work for the vast majority of Indian consumers.

What follows below is my analysis of how Microsoft can learn from carmakers and their travails in tackling this hard-to-understand yet lucrative consumer market.

Doors and Windows: Yes. Cars and Windows: Yes.

I track the growing auto industry in India/Asia very closely because I love cars, motorbikes and driving in general. I’ve also read every decent car magazine that’s sold in India for the past 15 years. I’ve observed the Koreans, Germans, Czechs & Japanese come into this market to try and succeed. I have also observed how Indian auto manufacturers have tried to stay relevant and competitive in the face of impending competition.

Is it really possible to try and draw a parallel between Windows 8/8.1 and foreign carmakers in tackling the Indian consumer? I believe there is because just as people have personal preferences in choosing their next car, they also have preferences when it comes to devices. The two are not that different if you think about it.

Windows 8 & METRO: Why it was needed

I totally get why Windows 8 was what it was. Microsoft needed a differentiator in the tablet/touch market and Windows 8 allowed them to try and have a crack at the iPad. It was a huge risk and as it happened, one that failed.

For those who don’t know, Windows 8 was Microsoft’s attempt to try and make the traditional desktop and newer touch worlds coexist at the same time. In addition, Windows 8 also incorporated the Metro design language, a flat design language that relied more on typography, function and content, and less on graphics.

Unfortunately, Microsoft wasn’t able to attract enough consumers to embrace and use Windows 8. And while one may argue that the Windows 8 numbers (350 million now?) are high enough, we also know that a large part of this is in the corporate/enterprise space where customers really don’t have an option.

I’ve spent many hours at IT supermarkets and have seen the lack of interest amongst shoppers in the Windows Laptops on display from the big OEM’s: HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer…and so on. And while these OEM’s do not make bad PC’s, the Windows 8 screens and interfaces are just unable to excite even a casual shopper to stop and take a look.

But, before I offer any suggestions, let me elaborate on Indian market demographics and the overall positive sentiment that exists for Microsoft.

Why India should matter

India as a market should matter to Microsoft.

Almost every Indian I know has a friend or relative working at Microsoft Redmond. Bill Gates, and now Satya Nadella, are role models for many an Indian parent and child and the Microsoft story is an exciting one. Many markets in Indian cities and small towns have huge signboards that advertise courses in MCSE/IT Administration, Word, Excel, MS Office, and SQL Server. I’d estimate that more than half of the software engineers in this country work on .NET, C#, ASP and so on. Most SME’s in this country run Windows Server and Microsoft Office. Nearly everyone I know has used Windows at some point in time in their careers. Overall, India is bursting with positive energy for Microsoft as a company.

But, India is also a market where costs are an issue for mainstream computing products. MacBook’s and iPhones cost twice as much here and are a complete rip-off in my opinion. And because volumes aren’t high, I doubt if Apple will ever want to, or be able to drive costs down.

That leaves Chromebooks. The half-PC’s that aren’t really PC’s for anything other than light browsing and some media consumption. You NEED to be connected to make Chromebooks work well which is a problem because not only are data plans expensive in India, connectivity by and large is downright horrible. (And yes I know that Chromebooks can sort-of work offline but…)

India also does NOT yet have a popular BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) culture at the workplace. This further increases the likelihood that many professional workers use company-provided Windows devices and MSOffice in their places of work.

So, you have expensive MacBook’s/iPhones on the one hand AND Chromebooks crippled by poor connectivity on the other. In this kind of market, could there be anything more important for Microsoft than Windows 10 to ride this perfect storm of opportunity?

In short, no. But they HAVE to get it right.

Let’s take a few examples of hits and misses from the automotive industry in India.

Skoda & VW

In the mid to late 1990’s, Skoda, a small and relatively unknown Czech carmaker was greeted with sales success here in India with its maiden model, the Octavia. This surprised many as Skoda cars are perceived as ‘cheap’ in Europe and were known to have after-sales issues that exist even today. But somehow Skoda did great by any standards and probably even exceeded its own targets.

Skoda succeeded here because Indians fell in love with their designs, AND, the relative affordability of buying into a European brand. It was only natural that Volkswagen, Skoda’s parent company, followed suit some years after, hoping to match if not exceed the success of its junior brand. The Skoda Octavia now started competing with the VW Jetta. The Skoda Superb with the VW Passat.

Needless to say, the numbers were less than encouraging for VW. What made it even more difficult to digest was the fact that every model they launched was qualitatively superior if not similar to their Skoda counterpart. After all, these cars shared common components and relied on a global pool of high quality suppliers.

What was the problem?

The answer lay in the design. VW’s design was far from inspiring for Indian tastes. While dark grey dashboards, steering wheels & interior upholstery are actually seen as cool and avant-garde in Europe AND in some cases even represented as premium (e.g. BMW M3/M5), these design elements do NOT excite the Indian consumer in any way.

Skoda sold better here because Skoda’s car are generally prettier than their VW counterparts. They have edgier styling with chrome accented bodywork, wood-panels and chrome linings on the steering and dash together with rich beige two-tone interior upholstery. And Indians lap this stuff up. Looks work. It can make you feel like a thousand bucks when you park your new car next to your neighbours’.

Of course there are aberrations to this success story (like the Skoda Fabia and Skoda Yeti, both oddball designs), but I’ll leave that aside for a future article maybe.

Fast forward to today. VW cars sold in India now have chrome body accents, wood-panelled dashboards and more visually appealing looks and their sales numbers are back to where they should be. It’s the little things that make a design look and feel premium, and VW had to bear the ignominy of low sales till such time they figured out the Indian consumer.

A few years is a long and costly affair in the automotive Industry. Heads roll, CEO’s change, blame is apportioned and everybody walks away bruised. All things remaining equal, consumers expect good looking and well-designed products. To draw a parallel, Metro and Flat UI’s may work for the digitally-evolved set, just like dark-grey works great on a BMW M3, but it doesn’t and never will work for most of the Indian consumers.

I’m a little concerned because as recently as last week, I saw some leaks on the to-be-announced Windows 10 Consumer Preview with more of the modern and minimalist.

Hyundai: Appealing Designs.

Unlike the conservative Japanese, the Koreans are naturally flashier with their design sensibilities. Every Hyundai car that has been launched in India to compete with the entrenched Maruti-Suzuki (Japanese) has been very successful. And it’s because Hyundai designs them to be stylish, with chrome bits outside and in, gorgeous dashboards and upholstery. Hyundai also manages to give more kit at same or lower prices. They really figure out the best combination of looks, features and price.

My personal opinion is that Japanese cars are better engineered than the Koreans. But, the Koreans are able to keep up by launching spicier designs of feature-loaded models at similar or lower price points.

Sometimes good design can hide an averagely engineered product which Windows 8 is not.

And sometimes good design is required even when the product is cheap. The next example about the Tata Nano is one such case about how NOT to do it.

The Tata Nano. Cheap is good. Cheap-Looking not so.

The Tata Nano was designed to be the cheapest car on Indian roads by one of the country’s largest conglomerates: Tata Sons. In fact, the global press hailed the Tata Nano as the cheapest petrol-engined 4-door, 4-seater car in the world which it probably was.

A noble cause. It should have worked. It had everything going for it.

The Nano was/is a great piece of frugal engineering BUT it failed to capture the imagination of the Indian consumer because it came across as cheap and built to a price. (Conversely, Tata later launched a real beauty of a multi-utility-van (MUV) called the Tata Aria, but blew it because it priced it over its rivals.)

I’ve been tracking recent attempts by Microsoft at the cheap end of the tablet market with its near-zero Windows 8 licensing policies. But cheap, like the Tata Nano, doesn’t always work unless it’s backed up by attractive and premium design.

MacBook’s and iPhones are gorgeous to look at and experience. But, so are the lower-end Android phones. And even though in my opinion they (the low-end Android phones) are poorly engineered devices at best, they do more than enough to keep the cash registers ringing.

I hope Microsoft can learn a lesson from the above.

Gorgeous does work.

Switching for a brief moment to Windows Phone.

I’m a huge advocate of the Lumia 730 and Lumia 530. I am almost sure that a few of my employees were convinced by me to get them. But, recently, two of them upgraded their phones to Xiaomi Redmi Note 4’s last week. This phone retails for the same price as the Lumia 535 in India (Rs. 9500 approx.). BUT, one look at its gorgeous 5” screen, beautiful wallpaper with its silky smooth swipe animations and you know right away this was something special.

This phone had me at hello!

The overall product, the screen clarity, speed, navigation and animations feel buttery smooth and awesome. These Xiaomi phones are not running stock Android, BUT, a gorgeous skin made by their manufacturer Xiaomi (dubiously known as the Chinese iPhone maker).

And while these phone may not have the same build quality of a Lumia, they appeal to consumers to whip out their wallets and buy. (BTW, one of my colleagues returned his Xiaomi handset just yesterday because the USB charging port came loose within a day or purchase.)

Gorgeous does work AND it does get products off the shelves.

While we are on Android phones, let me add that the much hyped material-design influenced Android One has failed in India for more reasons than one. I can only guess that flat-design may have had something to do with it, in addition to not-so-friendly business terms from Google.

Design tips for Microsoft Windows 10 Consumer

So, taking a cue from the Indian automotive industry, I’m going to try and suggest ways in which Microsoft can make Windows 10 a huge hit with consumers not just in India, but worldwide.

1. Staid, Sober, Scandinavian, and Minimalist does NOT work here

Boring, dull, flat and minimalist designs do NOT appeal to Indian consumers. Ever been to an Indian wedding? Noticed the explosion of colour and senses. This IS what we are about as a nation of a billion people. We like designs that are a bit Over-The-Top with a bit of bling and kitsch thrown in.

We don’t live in homes with wooden floors, white walls and Ikea furniture. Well maybe some do, but those are the minority and they buy expensive iPhones and Macs to begin with.

We are an aspirational people and our consumer choices are a reflection of our individual and social perceptions.

And Microsoft, please don’t expect and wait for third-party developers to skin the OS in case it lacks ZING out-of-the-box. No Stardock Modernmix can solve this problem.

2. Don’t listen only to the people in Windows 10 Preview.

It should be evident to Microsoft that the 1.5 million people, myself included, who are a part of Windows 10 Preview will probably buy it anyway! But do these 1.5 million represent that 1 billion Windows users? No Microsoft. They don’t.

I shudder when I see comments from some folks in the Windows Insider Program about how Microsoft should leave Metro untouched because it is so awesome. Come on! This strategy may work for enterprise users but will not fly with consumers.

For every person that is vocal about embracing Metro, Metro Apps & the Windows 8 Start Screen, there are 10 others who stay silent.

3. Be bold Microsoft.

Computing and graphic power has been getting progressively cheaper. And yet, UX’s have been getting flatter and less graphically intensive. And while some people love flat and modern and I can completely respect that, it doesn’t do it for me.

Have Microsoft/Intel learnt nothing from the Film and Television industry?

TVs improve to accommodate better quality content and content providers continue to improve the quality of their sitcoms, movies and sports coverage. It’s a symbiotic relationship that improves business for both. And yet, as the personal computing landscape has gotten cheaper, faster and more powerful processors, the UI’s have reverted back to being flat. This is one trend I will never fully comprehend.

I fear the real problem lies with today’s UX designers. Design is cyclical and for the last few years it has been flat and functional. If you are a hip and happening UX/UI designer today, you WILL shun gradients, textures, shadows and three-dimensional effects in favour of large typography, whitespace and minimalism. But I believe the two worlds CAN co-exist and these designers must be pushed to their creative limits to turn out something spectacular.

The designers at Microsoft are working on what might be the last major version of Windows. And to think Windows 10 Consumer should have an Office or OneDrive inspired UI would be poor judgement on Microsoft’s part. I use the aforementioned products to get work done. Is it too much for me to ask not to be reminded of work when I’m setting my morning alarm or watching a movie? Must my watch resemble a fitness band? Please…

So, Microsoft:

FIRSTLY, the goal for your design team has to be to make customers stop in their tracks when they see a gorgeous Windows 10 PC Screen on display. The attention span of an end-user needs to be captured at the initial user interface or else you have lost them no matter what amazing functionality you build into the platform.

SECONDLY, don’t ONLY dish out a flat user-interface! I realise you must do this for Enterprise customers but don’t stop there. Give every user a SECOND option that is the complete opposite i.e. lustworthy – put in the bells and whistles – the textures, silky smooth animations and navigation. After all, you’ve tried the flat UI approach and the world has answered. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you can do the above, you will take the discussion away from ecosystems AND focus it back on a gorgeous product called Windows 10 staring at consumers on market shelves later this year.

Yes, I DO want my yet-to-be-purchased i7 quad-core NVidia-powered hybrid to shimmer and ripple with each buttery smooth swipe and click.

And no, I do NOT want Windows 10 Consumer to be like my Kindle. I already have one and it puts me to sleep every night…yawn.

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Why does the future belong to product startups in India

I predict starting 2016, we will hear $3-4 billion product companies coming out of India every year.

NEW PRODUCT (2)The startup ecosystem has come a long way in the country, especially in the last decade or so. People often ask me at various forums and events as to where I see the startup ecosystem heading in the coming years. While it may be difficult to predict precisely, there are perceptible changes.

While the turn of the century was about the rise of the Indian services and outsourcing industry, I believe today it’s about the product companies. The rise of the product startups in the country has been due to numerous reasons, but the stellar growth has only made things exciting.

One of the reasons for the mushrooming of product companies is due to people returning from overseas after they have sensed an opportunity. They want to build a product that addresses the market opportunity. When I returned from the US, I saw some clear patterns and opportunities that I could work on. While one choice was to work with existing companies in the travel and tourism space, the other was to create a brand. I chose to go with the former.

The second clear reason is that people no longer want to do back office work for the world. For example, a lot of companies in the space of analytic work around identifying patterns and ideas for companies that outsource work to them. You will see a lot of individuals from these companies building a product start-up around same principles.

This is the natural progression and evolution of an industry. Outsourcing gained prominence because of cost arbitrage and then the IT companies started getting innovative to increase their share of the pie. They started advising various companies on how they should re-engineer their business processes and additional things they could do.

Phase 1 was about moving cost offshore and labour arbitrage while Phase 2 was making it efficient and optimising it. Indian outsourcing companies started evolving their services by providing additional services and at the same time automating it and making it non-linear to people.

The natural progression after that is if employee of these IT companies were advising clients on how to make their business processes better and how to “go to market” more efficiently, what prevents them from going to market on their own? You will see a lot of companies that are an offshoot of big IT establishments. You see individuals go out and address markets problems and opportunities rather than work for someone else.

Carpe Diem

Moreover, the services company has allowed people with similar ambitions to come together and seize the moment. Services companies have become the place where co-founders have met and most of the time the early hires in a startup are from these services companies. When there was a lot of movements around outsourced product management where companies outsourced their engineering work to India, it was obvious that employees from these services companies would get together and start a product company of their own.

The overall IT industry has evolved and the entrepreneurial ecosystem has been built to some extent and has gained velocity. According to Grant Thornton India, PE investments in India amounted to $1.7 billion last month, taking the overall PE deal tally to $10.2 billion in the first 10 months of this year. Spread across 500 PE deals, investments are up 18 per cent in value terms and 37 per cent in terms of number of deals in 2013. The entire investment community, access to capital and breadth of funds have increased quite dramatically.

The appeal of being a part of a product company is far cooler and hipper, rather than being a part of an IT services firm. For an aspiring entrepreneur, the IT services story has been beaten to death. No one wants to start another company in the outsourcing space and given the number of successful product companies like Druva, InMobi and Zoho, people now have role models. As entrepreneurs see billion dollar companies are now possible in the product space, it serves as fuel to the entrepreneurial fire. An aspiring entrepreneur wants to build a product company that will address a global market need.

Role of Industry Bodies

Industry bodies are also playing their part. Bodies like Nasscom have a separate Product Council and Product Conclave, which brings together a good collection of product companies in the form of peer-to-peer learning and experiences. Another body that is doing a good job is iSPIRT that has some big initiatives. It puts a big focus on the M&A connects where they look to enable big US tech companies to connect to a lot of Indian start-ups. Hence, we have seen a bunch of startups like Little Eye Labs and few others being acquired.

iSPIRT is providing a platform that enables big tech companies to acqui-hire, which essentially is acquiring a startup to get access to their talent. This helps both sides – buyers that know they can do a deal in India and integrate startups effectively and for the startup a viable exit route even if it’s not in a revenue generating state. It is also extremely focused on peer-to-peer learning of product companies. From newsletters from founders and experts to roundtable interactions, the body looks to bring curated number of entrepreneurs to come and share experience of selling globally.

Nothing succeeds better than success and the early successes of various product companies have set the stage as role models. Once the momentum builds it breaks the inertia in the system. I predict starting 2016, we will hear $3-4 billion product companies coming out of India every year. In that sense, 2015 will play an important role in ironing out structural issues in the system and ensuring the ease of doing business is improved.

 

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Knowing Versus Understanding Your Customer

When it comes to retaining your customer, you simply do not need to know them but should also try to understand them. If you wonder that why are your competitors holding a superior hand than you and why are they successful in catching the pulse of the customers?

The reason could be that they are putting more efforts in understanding the customers than you.

And here you are….You just know who your customers are, but do not understand them?

Understanding them could mean the difference between retaining customers and losing them to the competition.

Knowing your customers — information typically collected by a business — means you know who they are demographically, what content they’re reading, and so on. Most companies do a good job on this front.

When it comes to understanding customers, however, many companies come up short. Understanding customers helps businesses deliver an online product with meaningful and compelling value propositions that meet not only their current needs but also their evolving and future needs.

Gain customer insight and just merely not know but try to understand your customer’s:

  • Purchasing power: Find out the degree of disposable income within the community.
  • Demographics: Demographics serve as a means of locating geographic areas where the largest number of potential customers live.
  • Residences: Are homes rented or owned? In what kind of accommodation do they live .
  • Means of transportation: Do prospective customers in the area own vehicles, ride buses or bicycles, and so on?
  • Age ranges: Does the community consist primarily of young people still approaching their prime earning years, young professionals, empty nesters or retirees?
  • Family status: Are there lots of families in the area or mostly singles?
  • Leisure activities: What type of hobbies and recreational activities do people in the community participate in?
  • Credit risk profile: The credit risk profile of the customer needs to be evaluated in order to understand your customer well.
  • Attitudes to and uses of technology:
  • Environmental and ethical views
  • Their preferences to go to your competitors

To innovate and retain your customers, you should clearly understand their preferences if you want to stand out from your competitors.

Guest Post by Shweta, Institute of Product Leadership