Events Landscape 2.0

About four months ago, most of the core volunteers that had built NASSCOM Product Conclave into a successful event gracefully handed over the keys for NPC’13 to a new team. Thereafter, in an effort to address the remaining gaps in the product ecosystem, multiple initiatives were born. Playbook Round Tables was one of them which has been immensely successful right from the word go. They have already brought unmatched experiential and peer learning to 120+ product startups.

Playbook Round Tables are an example of small, highly-curated, nation-wide events that are hyper focused on specific real-world problems most product startups face. Back in 2009, and I know it’s hard to picture this now, NPC was reimagined just along these lines. We saw it as the specialized version of the mega event of those times – the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit. In fact, we kept the format as-is and just populated it with very product-centric and highly curated content. This clicked and NPC went on to become the mega event that it is today.

Now, the wheels are turning again and further specialization is happening in the ecosystem.

UnPluggdDEMO, etc. have become places where early stage angel and VC investors get together to hear curated entrepreneurial pitches. This category came to life when the self-help volunteer community created Proto.in.

Now the same powerful energy is at work in building another specialized event. This will bring many global CIOs in front of dozens of curated startups. Watch out for more about this important event in the coming months!

There is another fundamental shift afoot not just here, but all over the world.

Community powered learning is becoming the new norm. This trend has been in the works in our ecosystem for years. A wonderful example of this is The Fifth Elephant, a three-day workshop and conference on big data, storage and analytics, with product demos and hacker corners.

Early next week an important new community powered learning event will be launched. This will take the Playbook Round Tables to their logical conclusion. It will be a 2-day “learning orgy” (yes, that is an acceptable phrase now!) for practicing product entrepreneurs where they’ll fluidly exchange knowledge about playbooks. It’ll be a transformative experience. To maintain high quality of peer learning, it’ll be invite only! Somebody who is already attending will need to pull you in.

Defying economic gloom, Indian Product entrepreneurs are gaining confidence.

They are now reaching out to eclectic groups beyond their immediate ecosystem in The Goa Project. They are taking a bit of Bangalore to other countries with Startup Festivals. The self-help volunteer community is on a roll. In the next few months, you will see the event game go up one more notch.

We are now creating open-source based “public goods” that small buyers (e.g. jewelers, tier 2 manufacturers, etc.) can use to drive their own learning programs. The initial pilots have gone very well. And these are leading to some powerful partnerships with trade associations. So, together with our new partners we are planning to rapidly grow the pool of informed software product buyers. We are talking about delivering our “Be an Informed Software Product Buyer” sessions to, not thousands, but hundreds of thousand small businesses in India.

There is lots of new stuff on its way.

Step by step, we are fixing critical product ecosystem gaps on our own using the pay-forward model. We, the self-help volunteer team, won’t rest till India becomes a Product Nation!

[Thanks to ThiyagaRajan, Avinash Raghava, Bala Parthasarthy, Pallav Nadhani, Sridhar Ranganathan, Vijay Anand and Kiran Jonnalagadda for reading drafts of this and suggesting improvements.]

The march of the product brigade!

For the last fifteen years and more, there has rarely been a meeting of visionaries and practitioners in the IT industry where somebody does not offer the view that the days of IT services are nearing an end and the product movement will create new heroes for the industry and country.  In each of those fifteen years, the gap between the revenues of the services firms and product pioneers has only widened and a cynic might be pardoned for asking “Is it really worth our while to obsess about products when the services sector continues to do well and find newer and newer avenues and models for growth?”

The truth is that the success of  product ventures is an idea which has been slow in developing but whose time has now surely come. Many successful Product Conferences conducted by NASSCOM in Bengaluru and led by the passionate  Sharad Sharma and his band of merry evangelists, the iSPIRT and ProductNation initiatives of the product group championed by former NASSCOM stalwart Avinash Raghava, the very successful Knowledge Management and Intellectual Property movement led by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the huge deals flows seen from product wannabes for funding by the Indian Angel Network all point to a renewed surge of enthusiasm for a “Made in India” wave that will sweep the industry forward and unleash a tsunami of success for many young entrepreneurs.

However there is no case for a simplistic polarization between services and product companies and there is certainly no basis for the argument that IT services firms will decline and give way to product firms. Even five years ago, when we had postulated that the industry would grow to a three hundred billion dollar level by 2020, the canvas was painted in many colours – on-premise and cloud based services, new platforms and frameworks, accelerators and shrink wrapped and embedded products. The boundaries are blurring and most of us in services have embraced IP creation as a necessary part of all our vertical solutions. At Zensar we have built a compelling “Digital Enterprise” strategy that leads our clients from systems of record through the wonderland of Cloud, Mobility, Social Media and Analytics to true systems of engagement. This strategy is delivered through an eco-system of product partners who have focused point solutions for vertical and horizontal engagement. The day is not far when all services firms will attempt to garner over thirty percent of their revenues from systems integration and carry a cohort of product partners into new markets.

This is not to say the product companies cannot succeed on their own steam. On the contrary, there is a strong sense of self-belief in the new generation of product entrepreneurs in our country even as some of the global product majors are beginning to consider themselves as services companies. A forthcoming CII Knowledge Management conference will showcase small companies in India that can provide worthy solutions that push the frontiers of knowledge, for organisations in all user domains and as well as technology savvy services organisations. A revolution is in the making in this country and the march of the product brigade will lead this revolution !

Protect your Enterprise Network from infected BYODs – A disruptive product from i7 Networks

Manjunath Gowda (Manju), CEO if i7 Networks, shares his experiences of starting up a products based company, ground up from India. In this freewheeling chat, he discusses on various topics ranging from branding the products, managing investor relationships to seeking IP protection for products offered in a niche, evolving marketplace. Read on…

What was the motivation for you to start i7, a product based company?

The decision to start i7 actually was spurred due to a comment from a CEO of a multinational company. While in discussion with him in the valley, he seemed to indicate we folks from India would never be able to run a product company successfully out of India specifically in networking. While his comment pricked me instantly, I took time to objectively reflect on his observations. After analysis, it occurred to me that I could prove him wrong – since I figured out that we had all ingredients to build one and sustain it too. Besides this, I had just then successfully sold off my previous venture. I was looking at doing something more exciting. All of these converged, and so i7 Networks came to be.

You have chosen to build products in the Internet security space, and specifically addressing the BYOD challenges. Can you explain the reasons behind choosing this segment?

First, the Internet security space is the most volatile and evolving area that businesses need to deal with. Hence there is lot of opportunity to offer disruptive products and services, to meet diverse security needs of enterprise customers. The emerging challenge these days is due to change in the nature of threats. Earlier, most products and solutions were geared towards dealing with threats emanating from sources external to the enterprise. Now, enterprises are grappling with the damage that could be potentially caused due to the internal threats – ones that emerge from within the organization. BYOD is an easy entry point that could cause this. So, we chose to focus on providing products and solutions addressing this area.

How do you differentiate your offering with other players in your field? What are your strategies to achieve competitive advantage?

Our product is disruptive in the segment. Traditional vendors and competition is focused on deploying an agent on to every device that needs to connect to the network in order to discover and manage security threats. We have completely inverted this proposition – and are offering a purely agent-less and zero latency based solution. This means that users won’t in any way be disturbed as they connect their devices to the network and work. The IT policies in enterprises are increasingly being influenced by end users in the company these days. We plan to effectively leverage this shift in the decision making patterns of the IT companies and use it to our advantage.

Since you are offering an unconventional product, what steps are you taking to market your product, so that it is viewed favorably by prospective customers?

The folks in the line of business readily can see the benefits and advantages that our product brings to the table. However, to ensure that we have buy-in from all stakeholders in the enterprise, it is important to make them aware of our product and our strengths. Hence, brand building has become an important activity for us. We do it by positioning ourselves as the thought leaders in the BYOD security space. We are active on all the related forums on BYOD security; we publish and provide insights on BYOD security regularly in leading worldwide magazines, blogs. We are present in all leading conferences on this topic. These have helped us to gain visibility to a large extent. We are seeing some early successes. You should note also that we have not spent much by taking this course to market our product.

Second, recent developments in the world, especially the programs like PRISM from the US government have actually helped us open up new markets and opportunities. A lot of developing countries are now seriously considering evaluating indigenous security solutions rather than depending on MNC based vendors. This is one development which we plan to leverage effectively. In this regard, we are coming up with an alliance of likeminded security solution providers from the developing economies. We intend to form a common forum and through it, we want to engage with governments of emerging countries.

I would imagine that channels are an important aspect of you reaching out to the market. What has been your key learning, working with them?

Dealing with channel partners who operate in services space is entirely different on how one would work with channel partners in the products space. Having come out fresh from selling my services venture, I had a lot to unlearn in this aspect, and learn new ways of dealing with products selling channel partners. In the products space, the channel partners will listen to you only if you can help them solve today’s problems, or if you can solve a real need in the market that has not yet yielded satisfactory outcomes. As always, relationship and transparency builds in trust – and so, we have been able to rope in credible channel partners in East Asia, Europe and US.

I notice that you have repeat investors, even when the nature of your current company is vastly different from your earlier one. In this context, I would like to know what it takes for one to build sustainable relationships with your investors.

I guess being honest and being punctual with my investors helped me a lot. I respect human relationship without expecting anything from them.So, when I need anything it becomes easy to ask something. This is what I think has led to sustained faith being imposed by my investors on my ventures and plans.

You have taken steps to protect your IP by filing patents. Tell us your experiences as you filed your first patent?

I was completely naïve on the aspect of IP for my product. However, when I visited my friends in the Bay Area and discussed my product and its features with them, all of them educated me on the value of protecting my IP, especially given the disruptive nature of the offering. They forced me to file for a patent ASAP. Having done that, and after spending more time with them understanding the nuances and benefits of filing patents, I realize the merits of doing so. I would urge all product entrepreneurs to consider this seriously, especially when your product idea is in a niche, underdeveloped marketplace.

You have used media/PR effectively in both of your ventures. What tips do you have for product entrepreneurs in India regarding these activities?

In India, we tend to focus a lot on engineering/product development aspects, at the expense of other key and important aspects such as positioning and selling your products. One should realize that marketing your product is of paramount importance. Media and other online mechanisms such as blogs, online magazines etc are a great way to reach a wider set of audience. The key thing is to not do these activities in spurts, but as a regular habit. Results from these activities cannot be achieved overnight – it takes time, and a lot of hard work, patience and perseverance. You need to establish yourself as the go to person in the area of the product / offering. You also have to be honest and genuine in your views and opinions. This is how you can build credibility. In summary, never take your foot off the marketing pedal is what I would say.

KeyMails is making the email smart for Outlook users!

Still believe email is small and dying a slow death in the world of IMs, tweets and Facebook messages? Just have a look at the massively viral ‘Every Second on the Internet’ and scroll till the end to get a visual realization of how big a part of our life email still is. Email is still the first choice for internal communication and chatter within a number of organizations owing to its ubiquitous nature and presence, not that it was intended to be used that way.

A number of startups are now building tools to help users get more out the email ranging from helping you get the social media information to turning your inbox into a to-do list in itself. But it is no wonder that the biggest peeve with the email has been its overload. With independent researches confirming the belief held for long that the overdose of email has severe effects on productivity costing precious man hours and increased costs.

With the latest Gmail update the users found the presence of the tabbed inbox easily helping filter the signal vs noise between social media, promotions and genuine email content. But Bangalore based KeyMails is looking to provide a similar level of productivity for the Microsoft Outlook users. Keymails is a plugin for Outlook helping users to prioritize the email and the best part it becomes efficient over time based on the usage patterns.

What is KeyMails and how does it work?

The KeyMails team is reinforcing the belief that for a large number of corporate users the desktop/laptop is the device where the emails get done with. Thus the plugin keeps all of the information on the device itself and doesn’t send anything on the cloud. Options like the ability to archive a mail till a due date along with being fully functional offline makes it an impressive tool for Outlook 2010 users.  

KeyMails works within Outlook system by creating a separate folder which implies that the user is still using the familiar Outlook interface thereby reducing the learning curve. By default the system prioritizes the mails based on the previous usage patterns but moving on the user can upvote/downvote certain users or domains to affect their priority ranking in emails for the KeyMails folder.

But why email and why Outlook?

Pankaj Kulkarni is the founder of Colimetrics the parent company behind KeyMails and he has been in the corporate world long enough to understand the email usage tools and patterns. According to him there are enough corporate Outlook users out there to keep them busy in building more efficient tools. With such a big market, building tools for them just is the right place to be.

Users & Funding

KeyMails had a public launch in June of this year and right now they are working on adding more users. The current user base befits a product newly launched but they have seen individual beta users come from organizations ranging from Viacom to Infosys to even the White House.

The venture is partially self funded by the co-founding team of Pankaj and Phaniraj with the money coming from the sale of their previous venture S7 Software Solutions and venture money coming from investor Yogi Kandlikar, who also happens to serve as the teams resource in the Silicon Valley.

Product timeline

Pankaj promises that what the user sees right now is just a sneak peak of the things to come. In the coming months they would be focusing on marketing campaigns and documenting content to help make the on boarding process a breeze. 

The short term goal for KeyMails is to introduce a freemium model of the product to get the user a taste of the product which is currently priced at US $25/year or US $3/month with a 30 day trial period. Apart from this Pankaj emphasized on the long term vision of building a host of services and tools around and email and productivity itself. Which would begin with email diagnostics and team collaboration to knowledge management, to help document recurring issues in the organization to help the staff.

On one hand desktop users would find boon in the tool built by Colimetrics on the other lack of multi-device or mobile support could be a bummer in certain regard. But then no two email users are alike head on to Outlook and give your productivity a spin on KeyMails!

Choice Overload prevents a Sale. The 4C approach may overcome this!

Too many choices make your customers just stop with browsing. They don’t buy and move on! So if you have too many looky-loos and not enough purchasers, you may be giving them Choice Overload!  Too many Free Trial users and not enough conversions? Choice Overload may be one of the problems in that case also. Whether you are an e-commerce business or designing a user interface, you may be overwhelming your intended audience with too many choices! Luckily there is a 4C approach, proven with social research, that may help you overcome this problem.

Here is a terrific TED talk by Social Researcher, Sheena Iyengar:

Sheena talks about experiments they did with handing out free samples of 6 different kinds of jam vs handing out 24 different kinds of jam. They found out that more people bought the jam when they were shown fewer choices, only 6 kinds of jam!

More people put money in retirement savings accounts when they were shown only a handful of retirement finds than when they were shown hundreds of options!

That’s the Choice Overload problem! Too many choices, people don’t choose and move on! Nice insights! But how do you overcome Choice Overload? Sheena recommends the 4C approach.

1. CUT – Cut the number of choices you are presenting. Whether it’s your e-commerce site or your user interface design, too many choices frustrate people. You need some choice, but too many choices may hurt your objective!

2. CONCRETIZE – Make your choices vivid! Don’t describe something. Show pictures of what happens when someone chooses something. Show the consequences of making a choice, not just more about the features of that choice. Talk about benefits of a choice!

3. CATEGORIZE – Chunk your choices into Categories that make it simple for your customers to narrow down what their choices are. Don’t overwhelm them with too many choices upfront! Make pre-defined combinations of packages where you could. In User Interface design, Wizards are a great example of making choices on behalf of the user, making it easier for them to start quickly.

4. CONDITION – Condition for Complexity! – Make simple choices easy to make and hide complex choices for later, once they have some experience with you.

Great research whose applicability can extend beyond just social research! Can help a lot in product start-up companies in designing and presenting choices or in designing user interfaces.

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice – William James

The push for products

By investing in the product marketplace, India will do the same leapfrog as it did with the mobile revolution. 

Recently I had the opportunity to witness the silent revolution that is taking off in India – a revolution that has been overshadowed (and somewhat suppressed) by the media-popular IT giants!

For a long time I have wondered why the IT giants with so much intellectual capital and knowledge had not invested in building products.  Most of these giants had smart folks who worked on endemic problems and were focused on solving them through service contracts. My queries to senior executives in IT giants were always met with one of the following answers:

    • not part of their niche,
    • not easily understood by analysts who closely watched their quarters,
    • they did not want their customers to feel that they were capitalizing on  knowledge gained through services to address the problems differently, and
    • did not have the rich domain experience.

 

My personal perception was that the reality was different.  They could guarantee (not just generate) a positive ROI with an incoming professional in six months. Investment in products required long term thought process and needed a completely different kind of entrepreneurial thinking.  More importantly it needed leadership that had an entrepreneurial mindset based on conviction and risk-taking.

In November of 2012 I had the opportunity to attend the Product Conclave of NASSCOM in Bangalore and it opened my eyes to a different India!  I got to see a level of passion that I had never seen before. I got to see the edge folks – folks who had worked in the domain in large companies and realized the drudgery of some of the maintenance work that they were doing.  While the vast majority were comfortable carrying on there were some folks in there who had the mind-set of “change-agents”.  They were not satisfied with simply doing the work – they wanted to get to the root issue and solve/eliminate the need for the problem.  They conceived thoughts and ideas on how they could solve the domain issue in a better way.  They aspired to replace the increasing labor costs with much better ways of doing things.  They were ready to eliminate their jobs completely but that did not fit the revenue model of large IT service companies.

These folks then did the next thing that “change-agents” do – shock everyone around them by giving up titles, safe corporate jobs and took the plunge.  They started working towards creating products that would satisfy a market need.

As per latest statistics, the total revenue of the product companies from India is currently over U.S.$2.0 Billion, from approximately 3,400 companies in the software and electronics/semiconductor industry.  When I dug into the demographics, the number of companies shocked me first, I had no idea about the same.  The revenue seemed fairly small as it works out to an average of $600K per company.   Also there seemed to be a concentration issue with 51% of the companies located in the NCR and Bangalore region.

In my personal opinion, by investing in the product marketplace, India will do the same leapfrog as it did with the mobile revolution.  It will truly democratize the software industry very quickly and let people shape their own destiny versus becoming part of the eco-system where you have to spend years to display shoulder badges of experience.  The biggest barrier is currently created by large behemoths to protect their territory.  They have service portfolios to do work, using labor at hourly charge out rates versus the paradigm shift of product folks that will either eliminate or dramatically reduce the need for the same.   Product evangelists are creating a different world that is moving away from “status quo” and coming up with new and different ways of doing things.  They are the “game-changers”.

Since the Product Conclave in November, I have seen the establishment of iSPIRT, a trade organization that is supported and focused on product portfolio companies.   It allows the product companies to build the eco-system that is required to support and enrich their environment with necessary supporting infrastructure.   Along with my colleague Greg Toebbe, I have also attended a session in February, 2013 on product start-ups wherein we were introduced to some innovative and creative technologies that had relevance to our requirements.

In this fast-paced, globally networked business environment, businesses are continuing to seek disruptive technologies that give them the competitive edge.  They are not just looking for smarter and more effective ways to do existing work but different and innovative business models that support their continued evolution in the marketplace.  They are not just looking to sell products but to engage customers in the experience – they are not looking for a sale, but a well understood and strong relationship with the customer.   Entrepreneurs need to ensure that their solutions are not constrained by the paradigm of “always have done it this way” but are “tectonic shifts” to the way of doing business.  They need to address not silo issues, but address them from a customer centric model.  They do not need to focus on big-data, mobility, social, etc., as buzz-words, but to provide solutions that provide the customer an engaging experience.   They should not get enamored by technology trends and their personal technology biases, but focus on the experience and convenience being desired by the millennial workforce participant.  By 2020, half the global workforce will be millennial and the new business models are not expected to come from the current large companies.

In the new world, businesses realize that the days of buying everything from the perceived “safe” companies is no longer the decision that will sustain them – they will buy best-of-breed from the smarter solution companies that treat the world as flat.  The power will not be in individual solutions, but the network of best-of-breed solutions.   Large companies with multi-year implementation timelines and businesses that seek to automate existing processes will not be the winners of the new world.  Solutions will have to nimble with the cycle from pilot to deployment being short followed by continued innovation.   Sales cycle will have to be supportive of the same and a long-term annuity of fixed maintenance will not be the driver; ease of use, usage metrics, continued innovation and overall satisfaction will be the new factors that will play into maintenance annuity.

So for all the product folks – my hats off to you!  My only advice would be to not be discouraged by the challenges that come along the way.  Do not care when people say “I told you so”, do not worry if you do not have all the skills to make it happen, do not worry if it takes a little longer that what you thought.  You are the “change-agent” for the revolution that needs to take place and if India has 50 percent of the world’s IT workforce, then it is time that they produce world class products!

Just Imagine

Today is India’s 66th Independence Day and the environment around, seems, to be generally shorn of excitement, energy and optimism. However, as is customary on such occasions, a call to the people – all of us – is, well, called for: to galvanise us all to action, to put our shoulders to the wheel of policy making that will make economic activity explode.  Such calls for action and indeed, the action, itself require us all to imagine an India that is radically different from the one that we see and experience each day around us.

Nandan Nilekani wrote “Imagining India” in 2008 and one of the things he imagined has since been actualised in the form of the Aadhar / UID project that provides an Identity card and number to every resident of India. Over 600million people would be recipients of this card by next year, 2014. In and as of itself, this would have been a gargantuan exercise, amongst the very largest in the world. But that by itself wouldn’t be as interesting as what the prevalence of the Aadhar infrastructure can enable.  Identity is a fundamental pre-requisite for any kind of financial transaction and the Aadhar project enables that.  “Know your customer” ( KYC) norms can now be easily done for all kinds of activities eg. From opening a bank account to applying for a gas connection to a phone to availing a loan to purchasing insurance. Hundreds of millions of people who operated in the informal or extra-legal financial services market will now come under the more benign, formal, organised and recognised regime.

Much earlier in the 1980s, Sam Pitroda imagined an India transformed with the creation and establishment of a nationwide telecom infrastructure.  Today, we all are witness to the remarkable benefits that this imagination has brought about. Over 900 million phone subscribers in just over two decades.

Even earlier, in the 1960s Dr Verghese Kurien imagined a young country that would be self-sufficient in milk. Operation Flood made India, formerly a milk deficient country, the world’s largest producer of milk accounting for over 17% of global output with an entire infrastructure, from rural to urban, tradition and technology to markets and branding.

Each of the above examples showcases the huge long term national benefits of creating big platforms – Unique Identity, Telecom, Milk Production and Distribution – through the sheer power of imagination, entrepreneurial energy, policy making, political will and savvy marketing. Platforms are soft and hard infrastructure – policy, rules of engagement and collaboration, co-opting of existing stakeholders, creation and harnessing of technology, innovative processes and business models. Such platforms while usually created and established by the government to serve public good, interest and national security, it is the subsequent entry of private entrepreneurs that enables the proliferation and development of additional technologies and services. For example, the mother of all platforms today, the internet, had its origins in the US Department of Defence Advanced Project Network.

So as we enter our 67th year as a nation, what is it that we can imagine? Indeed, what should we imagine? Very briefly,

i)               Education: In the age of MOOCs and Wikis, why cannot India have a national programme for education using and deploying the latest technologies? Video based learning, local languages with local examples, with the best teachers, with online testing? This will require the creation of a massive technology backbone, co-opting of existing institutions, training, establishment of processes and rules, financial incentives, payment and collection mechanisms for the entry and exit of private entities.

ii)              Healthcare is another area that requires enormous intervention along the lines being discussed. Telemedicine, remote diagnostics, new innovative low cost devices for self testing and medication, education and awareness, mobile clinics, logistics for moving patients and equipment, innovative payment systems, policy, regulation and oversight are areas that have to come together.

iii)            A marketplace for logistics providers – air, land and sea – across the value chain, integrated with warehouses, C&F agents, insurance providers, payments and settlements, processes for transparent pricing. Can be very useful for agriculture and industry.

There obviously are many more possibilities (viz. defence and space) and initiatives that can be imagined that will help all of us Indians and India. Can we set the ball rolling and start the process of engagement with various stakeholders – government, industry bodies, entrepreneurs and others – to help create platforms that can create a new India? Can we create and curate ideas for platforms that have the immense potential to fundamentally transform India.  Just Imagine.

The Virtual Medical Assistant – Practo.com – a cloud based service that covers over 8,000 doctors…

“Why isn’t there a place where we can store all our medical information?” is the question that bugged Shashank ND, Founder of Practo.com. Jamming together with a classmate from NITK Surathkal, they found a solution and founded Practo.com – a cloud based service that covers over 8,000 doctors and manages the records of nearly 3 million patients. 

Shashank, I was looking at your website and I was intrigued by the fact that you actually started this business because of a personal experience. Do give us an insight into how you started?

My father was to have a knee operation, and we had visited a couple of hospitals where we had some tests done and got some reports. The doctor advised based on the reports that my father required surgery. Now obviously I was concerned and we wanted to take a second opinion and have these records shown to a doctor in the US. It turned out to be a quite a clumsy and cumbersome affair. I had to take a photograph with my camera then transfer it online and then the doctor in the US responded to us asking for more information and then it suddenly struck me, if all the information was available in a secure repository that could be accessed easily 24/7 we wouldn’t have so much back and forth and delays.

But I wanted to double check things so the next time I visited my ophthalmologist I asked him to give me the prescription on email so I could keep a digital record of it. He told me that the system he used was 10 years old and didn’t support this functionality. He went on to say, if someone can give me a system like this I will gladly use it. So my imagination started running wild and I thought of a system where all our personal health records could be available digitally.

Fundamentally, we have a Facebook where we keep all our personal information, we have a LinkedIn where we keep all our professional information, I just wondered why there isn’t a place where we can store all our medical information. If you really look at it, doctors need records because they become more efficient in servicing patents. Patients are keen on information digitally stored because they don’t have the hassle of storing stuff physically as it is also subject to wear and tear. The problem was really the intermediary software and that’s the gap we stepped in to fill.

Did you have to invest a lot of time in educating the doctors on how to use the software or what potential benefits they would get? 

Honestly, the first few we didn’t have to, because they proactively told us that they need it, so it was more about convincing ourselves to quote for the software. All the doctors who came to us already had the problem, so they were contacting us to build the software, rather than us convincing them about buying it. But after the first few, we had to really sell the proposition to the other doctor’s.

So what’s the revenue model, you charge the doctors to use this or the patients, how does it work?

No, we charge the doctors. We give the software to the doctors and doctors pay us on an annual basis. Now what does the software do for the doctors, it helps them with four main things, one- it helps the doctors in scheduling, so all the appointments, reminders to the patients about their appointments are done through our software, it basically ensures that without any manual information the patients are reminded about their appointments and the patients visit the clinic on schedule. So the dropout rate because of being misinformed or not informed comes down drastically.

The second thing is EMR or Electronic Medical Records, just like my father’s report or my eye prescription. We allow the doctors to maintain all the digital records on an account of the patients. Now this information can be inscribed, a prescription, printout, and every type of medical information that can be stored about the patient.

The third thing is billing, so doctors who are doing billing manually or on MS Word or any other intermediary software can now do it on ours.

Finally we have built a functionality to generate reports; reports allow the doctors to keep the history of patients. So for example the doctor will come to know how many new patients they have seen in a month, such data could never be accessed earlier by a and we allow the doctors to see how many patients they have examined, the money they have paid, how much has been expensed, what is the profit for the month.

Shashank, you have a young team. I looked at that photograph on your website; they are all youngsters, average age, probably 25 or so, how do you keep them motivated and charged up to kind of support you in whatever you are doing? 

One of the thing that has worked for us is that even though I started the company, we ensure that everybody feels that this company is theirs by making sure that some part of the responsibility is completely given to them. Take our website for instance, the person who designed it used grey as the background color and frankly I hated the color but it was his design, it was his work, so even though I did not like it I allowed it to continue.

I make sure that each and every creator has ownership, and that’s what keeps them motivated. The other thing we did is to add experienced people to the mix and now we have about 30 people in the company who provide the experience to the team members who are inexperienced so that they can learn a different dimension of the corporate world. This keeps everyone going.

Finally, the idea that we set out with never changed. Whatever we embarked on from day  one continues to stay. This is a very good thing that binds us all together. 

How do you really take care of balancing the expectations of various stakeholders – investors, customers and your own employees… 

That is a great question and obviously it is a tough ask, but I have this pyramid of priorities that I have created in my life. Whenever a major decision is taken, I have a mental image of the pyramid. At the top of the pyramid is the company vision. The second block pertains to the needs of the customer; the third relates to my employees, fourth is the investor and fifth is me. So I ensure that any decision that I have to take, it is a combination of these priorities.

So where does this go from here? Are you looking at international market, what is your vision, what is your roadmap for the future? 

Our approach is very clear – we want to enhance the patient’s experience of healthcare. We also want to help doctors to be more effective in doing several things – working in their clinic, treating patients and learning new things among others. So with two fundamental principles of helping the patient and helping the doctor, we believe we can concentrate on healthcare for all of us. Implementing the solution in India certainly is a focus but there is no reason why it cannot be scaled and implemented overseas so we have set up base in Singapore and already gained a customer there.

Shaping Small Business India

Small Businesses play a significant role in a developing economy – from creating valuable business opportunities to employing a large chunk of the workforce. They are the drivers of growth contributing significantly to a range of sectors and industries.

Small Businesses produce nearly half the manufactured output and are also the largest employers of workforce in India after agriculture. Roughly, 75 million people in India are employed with small businesses. They contribute approximately 9-10% of the Indian GDP. An estimated 90% of industrial units in India come under small businesses. They contribute to 40% of value addition in the manufacturing sector and 35% to India’s merchandise exports.

With such significant contributions, it becomes imperative to encourage the growth of these businesses in India. We are now witnessing an increased focus on small businesses from several government institutions, corporate houses and financial entities. The government, by recognizing the small business opportunity, has introduced various policy measures to help them grow. It is also working towards promoting the small business segment by capacity building measures to keep them updated on emerging areas of business and familiarizing them with the changing laws and regulatory frameworks. Today, the government is developing a positive environment to encourage new businesses and entrepreneurs by providing support in several ways including financial assistance by allowing medium-term loans, reduction of interest rates by RBI etc.

India is a huge market brimming with many opportunities. This has encouraged the growth of the small business segment and brought tremendous success to entrepreneurs and business owners. So far, these businesses have limited their operations to the local Indian market. Increasingly entrepreneurs are keen on expanding to other markets and establishing a global identity. Today, the Indian small business industry is aiming for global markets, ready to compete against global giants. This is an encouraging sign and this industry needs to be provided the right support to cater to global needs.  Industry exchange programmes and access to market research data will help develop an understanding of the global market and its needs. Government support in setting up technology infrastructure will boost productivity and quality for these small businesses.

Another aspect that is essential in creating a positive environment for small businesses is to have friendly regulatory policies. Allowing Foreign Direct Investment, speeding up approvals, creating a single window system for information, simplifying operational frameworks etc. are key factors that will contribute towards the growth of small businesses in India.

Even with adequate support from the government and the private sector, small businesses in India face several challenges which need to be addressed. Prominent among them is the lack of access to technology and financial management resources. Despite various schemes from the government to enable easy access to capital, small businesses struggle to raise adequate funds. Private sector can contribute towards this issue by infusing equity funds and venture capital. In a study conducted by Intuit supported the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India, pointed out that small businesses in India are yet to realize the full potential of technology as a game-changer for business. The study also highlighted the top barriers to technology adoption being cost, lack of skilled manpower, low awareness of the benefits of technology, poor infrastructure and concerns about security and privacy. A collaborative effort is needed to address these concerns of small businesses and identify and develop solutions through participation from various quarters. A collective approach with government and private sector coming together is the ideal way forward.  Intuit in association with NIESBUD has introduced a financial literacy programme aimed at helping small business owners understand financial management. Initiatives like these are a positive step in bridging the gaps.

Key hindrances to the growth of small businesses also include lack of infrastructure and limited access to institutional assistance.  Infrastructure hassles have to be addressed on priority as it forms the base of starting a business and also affects productivity. Setting up SEZs, improving transportation through better road and rail connectivity, allowing reforms in telecommunication etc. will help address few problems related to infrastructure. Another challenge for small businesses is labour and talent acquisition. Start-ups and small businesses are generally not considered attractive career options. Participation in education and career related events and academic outreach will help in reaching out to youth and spreading awareness about this sector. Growth and success of small businesses will also automatically make them lucrative for acquiring the right talent.

There are a few factors that even small businesses need to keep in mind to succeed before starting out. Understanding the market is the topmost among them. Considerable research is required to comprehend the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the market.  It is necessary to understand the market preparedness for your product or service. Evaluating possibilities, pricing and competition will help build a credible product or start a service. Re-organizing and implementing necessary changes is essential to sustain in changing markets conditions.

Lastly, success in entrepreneurship and running a small business is not just dependent on the external factors as discussed above but on the internal ones such as the mindset of the entrepreneur. Challenges are abundant in starting a business but the will to find solutions and overcome these challenges is the key.

iSPIRT Sales RoundTable – Startup Sales, Lead Generation, Channel Partners

First of all, huge thanks to Vizury for sponsoring great food and the premises to hold the round table. Many thanks to Aneesh, NRK Raman and Srirang for leading the session and providing valuable inputs. And of course, to all the participants for the energetic discussions and knowledge sharing.

Here are the key takeaways from my notes.  Please note that there are several nuggets of practical advice based on the experiences of the session leaders and the participants, and not just standard text book stuff. It was a great learning experience for me and I hope I can pass on some of it to you.

While we touched upon a lot of topics, we spent considerable time on startup sales, channel partners and selling to geographies outside India, and lead generation and qualification.

Read on to know more.

Startup Sales and Hiring Salespeople 

Best guys to sell during early stages of the startup are the co-founders themselves, even if they don’t have sales background.  Initially, you will stumble, but you will learn and figure out what works for you.  If founders cannot sell the product in the first 1 or 2 years, then you must seriously evaluate the viability of the business

Once you’ve made the initial sales yourselves, then you put in a structure. External sales guys need to have conviction in the product to sell it.  That will be lacking during the early stages of the company – but founders have that conviction.  Hence founders can sell better during the early stages.  One participant mentioned that for the first 3 years, he and his co-founder were selling and only later they looked at a professional sales person.

Getting the first reference customer is always the toughest part. One you have a reference customer, momentum will build.

Hiring an external sales guy is not a good idea at the beginning.  Identify folks from engineering and customer facing teams who have the aptitude or inclination to do sales and ask them to lead Sales.

Culture fit is very important in a sales person. Also, check if the person has spent 4+ years in a single company – that shows that he has been delivering results.  Sales people should also be pushing back to you.  This shows that they are getting feedback from the field and are informing you about market situation.

It is a good idea to raise investor money to scale up business development.  Investors are willing to invest in this once the product has been validated and you have a few customers.

You need to experiment to figure out what works for you. For example, for a company that made trading software, an ex-trader worked great as a salesperson instead of a seasoned sales guy, because the ex-trader was able to relate to the customer.

The sales person should have hunger and also have a good history of past successes.  Consider the age of the sales person too – in some industries, an older person might work better as the customers expect to see maturity.

Like pair programming, “pair selling” is also a useful thing to try.  This helps in DNA match, culture fitness.  Some companies have paired an account manager or a product manager with the sales guy.

In complex sales where there are multiple stakeholders from the customer’s side, ensure that you sell individually to all the influencers.

You need to pay close attention to how the customer buys.  Branding and marketing engine is also very important in “creating a desire in the customer to buy”.

Channel Partners (local and global)

When creating partnerships (in the context of channel partners and resellers) globally, be careful what works and what does not in that culture.

In general, partnerships work well outside your headquarters and you can have multiple non-exclusive partnerships.  People like to do business with a local person.

Look at the credibility of the partner.  Is the partner knowledgeable and up to date in your domain?  For one company, partnerships worked well in Brazil, but did work very well in Europe.

When you set up an office in other countries, you need to be aware of the labour laws regarding how easy/difficult it is to fire non-performing employees, taxation, accommodation etc.  Going with a partner alleviates all of this to a great extent.  However, you need to have someone from your team who is responsible for managing partnerships.

Remember that the main motivation for the channel partner is money. So make sure there is enough for them so you have their mind share.  Even if that means that the channel partner makes more money than you.  Initially, you need to be very involved so the partner tastes success. For example, you need to generate leads to the partner, go along with him to complete the sale and let him make the money from your efforts, initially. This will get them excited.

Similarly, if you want to have sales offices or channel partners in other locations, encourage well performing sales folks from headquarters to move to that location, stay there for a few years to set up processes, signup channel partners, hire local people and train them.

You can start by signing an MOU first and have some targets.  Then after 6 months of so, you can sign a formal partnership agreement.

One company also pays 20% of the salary of an employee of the channel partner.  Then you can have a joint business plan with your partner to set goals, metrics tracking etc.

You should look at your customer acquisition cost and consider pay a huge chunk (say 80%) of that cost to the channel partner.

While making sure that you do not have exclusive agreement with a single partner, be sensitive that having multiple partners in the same geography can lead to partner conflicts which in turn could be bad for your business.

Also, look at companies that sell complementary products. Maybe you can partner with them too so they make money by cross selling your product.

Channel partners are not really a must. If you can make your product easy to setup and use, then you can focus more on marketing, google adwords etc (e.g. SAAS models).  Also, in these models, you need to ensure that partners have good incentives as typically the ticket sizes are smaller and they don’t have opportunities to make money from “implementations”, training etc.  One company took an approach to let the partner decide the pricing in a particular geography with the agreement that a percentage of the revenue goes to the partner.

However, if the product is not easy and you need people on the field to educate the customers, you should definitely consider channel partners.

Sales Engine is similar to Engineering Engine

One of the biggest challenges faced by Indian product companies is that the founders do not have a sales background.  Our ecosystem has evolved to a point where we can build great products, but lack the sales acumen.  There was consensus among the participants that sales is much harder than engineering. Engineering, while no doubt hard, is still manageable.  We know the inputs, outputs, risks and mitigations with a high degree of certainty.  Sales is a different beast with lots of uncertainties.

Srirang guided us to treat the sales engine also similar to the engineering engine.

The three pillars for the Sales Engine are (a) People, (b) Processes and (c) Technology.

People: Competencies, Incentives, Org Structure.  As in engineering, there can be a magnitude of difference between an average sales person and a good salesperson.  So hiring the right candidate is very important.  And you have to set up the correct incentive program and org structure to ensure motivation and excitement in the sales team.

Processes: Strategy, Execution, Metrics.  Again, as in engineering, you need to define the strategy, the execution plan (who does what) and what metrics you are going to use to measure execution. 

Technology:  Enablement, Communication, Monitoring.  Sales team needs to be enabled.  For example, ensure flawless demonstrations and training to the sales people so their selling experience is smooth and they focus on the customer.  Use the right tools (e.g. Excel, CRM, SalesForce) to track and monitor their activities.

At different stages of the company, you need different kinds of pillars – which means you need different kinds of sales people, different processes and different technologies.

Lead Generation and Qualification 

The classic sales process consists of five stages:

  1. Lead Generation.
  2. Lead Qualification
  3. Relationship building
  4. Solution design
  5. Negotiation and Closure

Depending on the kind of product, some of the later steps might not be relevant, but lead generation and lead qualification are of primary importance.

Focused lead generation is better than generic lead generation.

Some companies have used databases of leads to generate leads and have found it useful for mass email campaigns.

LinkedIn is a good source to connect with prospects (with premium account, you can send InMail too).  After connecting, you can then try to have a call/skype to show your value proposition, if there is interest.

Someone mentioned that LinkedIn Ads worked for them.  On Google adwords, there were mixed reactions.  Some say it is costly, but it helps to put the word about the product. Google adwords can generate a lot of leads, but people also noted that there was a lot of churn from these leads (in the context of SAAS based business).

If you have a horizontal product, make a vertical offering. Your campaigns have to industry specific and you should talk their language. Customers are looking for a reference customer they can relate to.  This produces better results than targeting all verticals with a horizontal positioning.

Metrics is very important in the sales engine.  You must be measuring and tracking customer acquisition costs. And track them at various stages of the sales funnel.  For example, let’s say you generate 1000 leads, out of which 600 are then qualified, 400 of them get to proposal stage, 200 get to negotiation, 150 closed and then 130 retained for renewal.  At each stage, you must count the man hours spent and put a cost for that.  This will help you improve your sales processes – particularly in the area of lead qualification as you can see what kind of leads are working and you can pursue folks who are likely to buy.

The first step is to establish Qualification Criteria. Then evaluate each lead and assign score to lead based on the qualification criteria.  Based on the score, put the lead in one of three action buckets – pursue, drop or nurture (i.e. keep warm).

Also, ensure you pay attention to negative attributes to qualify leads based on your experience and judgment – e.g. if a company has greater than 2000 employees, then they might not be suitable to your business.

Don’t take up a wrong customer at startup stage. It can be a drain on your resources.

There are three main aspects of lead generation.

  1. Publish
    1. Blogs
    2. Website
    3. Industry Magazines
    4. Whitepapers
  2. Promote
    1. Speaker in conferences
    2. Advertisements
    3. SEO
  3. Connect
    1. Email
    2. Cold call
    3. Road shows
    4. Referrals
    5. Social Media

Conclusion 

The discussions “raised awareness” and provided lots of data from practitioners.

The key thing to remember is that there is no silver bullet and what worked for someone else may not work for you. Kishore Mandyam went one step further and said that what worked for them six months ago might not work for them now!  While there is no magic wand, you can look at general guidelines and best practices from the experiences of 20 odd practitioners.

If you have any more tips or best practices, please do write them in the comments section.

Tweetable Takeaways

Best guys to sell during early stages  are the co-founders, even if they don’t have sales background. Tweet This.

Getting the first reference customer is the toughest part. One you have that customer, momentum will build. Tweet This.

Channel partners should make enough money off you. It is OK for them to make more money than you. Tweet This.

Invest in channel partners so they invest in your product. Tweet This.

Sales Engine is similar to the Engineering Engine. Tweet This.

If you have a horizontal product, make vertical offerings. Industry specific campaigns work better. Tweet This.

What’s my next Product Going to be? A Product Ideation/Extension Toolkit

You have your first product and it’s a success. Success only brings more demand from prospects, clients and customers for features that are not yet in your product. Some of them are not interested in all the features you have in your product but seem to use only some odd features. Or they have found a totally new use for your product that you have not yet thought of, as yet! As an entrepreneur you are sitting there thinking “Why don’t they just use what I have provided them in the way I think they ought to use it?”. These kinds of reactions from prospects and clients are not only normal but indicates that you are on the right path!. All of these can be confusing for a small product start-up. However it need not be. Here’s a toolkit put together with examples seen with various start-ups and mature product companies. Think of it as a set of dimensions along which your own products can be extended or new products ideated. Depending upon the nature of your software product – SaaS or On-Premise, different dimensions for product variations, price points or delivery methods could be applicable. The advantage of this kind of approach is that it makes it a systematic process and makes sure that what you do has exemplars elsewhere, preferably ones that have been successful!

1. Product Variants based on Number of Users 

This model may be  familiar with SaaS product companies. There may be a Free Version, say upto 10 users, Small Business version for  11 to 25 users and an Enterprise Edition for 26 to 400 users, for example. Before you choose this model it is always good to put yourselves in your clients’ shoes and make sure that it makes economic sense. Beyond a certain number of users, clients always prefer a very flat discounted pricing. I speak from personal experience! We once evaluated a SaaS product for a 25 person start-up company.  Beyond 15 users, a per user model did not make any sense for us since the discounts for more users was not steep enough. On-premise software was much less expensive than the SaaS alternative. An on-premise software with an initial steep cost and annual maintenance of 16 to 20% worked out to be much better. Like us, many clients and prospects may have unused server capacity, technical people on the payroll that have extra capacity. So hosting our own software did not add any additional hardware/software/people costs for us. This is a cautionary tale for SaaS product companies that go after large enterprises or elephants. Make sure your flat pricing makes it is still profitable for you with huge numbers of enterprise users after paying for servers, hosting, bandwidth, specialized support, etc. What if this client grew phenomenally?

2. Product Variants based on Additional Features

Most are familiar with Microsoft’s Home, Professional and Enterprise editions of software products. Basic features that made sense for home use would be in component products like Microsoft Word, and Excel. Professional editions added additional features in individual products and they added additional products that made sense in an office setting. Enterprise editions were capable of a lot more and some included server editions where the product is hosted centrally. One caveat is not to leave money on the table when you have a single product and you start adding features. At some point in time, your product needs to split into basic and advanced editions and you need to make sure you get paid additionally for added features. This is a problem you face after you add features. In product management, one of the big conundrums product start-ups face is knowing when to add a feature. If one prospect or client asks for a feature, put it on a running wish list. If two of them ask for a feature, put it in the next release. If three of them ask for it put it in the appropriate product variant and in the next build! When you do a demo and a presentation of your current product, always have Upcoming Features and Upcoming Products slides and solicit feedback.

3. Product Variants on Adjacent and Associated Technologies

In software product companies, there are always adjacent and associated technologies where your next products need to be. If your consumer facing product works in a browser, it may need a mobile version and sometimes,  vice-versa. Document management products may need workflow products to go along with them. An enterprise financial management product needs sales management, manufacturing, people management products to go along with them. This is one of those areas where paying close attention to what other software are used by your users may give you ideas about your next product stops. Clients will readily tell you what other products they need to go along with the one your sold them, if you have not already found them out when they implement your product. Integration services always go along with products, especially in enterprise facing ones.

4. Products based on different characteristics/preferences of users

Not all of your clients or users will use the product the same way. Some may re-purpose features you meant for something for something completely different. As I write this, our client is using an open-source CRM system for internal workflow handling. The reason is not that the workflow features of this CRM system are very strong but because the attachments and document version handling is very strong and 90% of their workflow depends on users submitting documents for verification, validation and formal certification. User Interface skins are based completely on preferences of users and personalization. For inspiration, consumer product companies like Unilever and Proctor and Gamble are great. You can be sure that there are one or two Dove Soap products, White and Pink, that contribute 80% of their sales. They still have Dove Sensitive Skin, Dove soap without any perfume, etc. Software product variants may not be that simple but paying attention to what different types of users or usages can lead to variants that make sense.

5. Products meant for different types of markets

Different markets may have use for some common features but sometimes may need to be completely tailored for a new market. Tax preparation software for the US market may not be of much use in Europe or Australia. Or by architecting the software a certain way, a lot of the software could be reused by including a business rules component and writing different business rules for different markets. Oracle Financials has an Oracle Government Financials parallel, which may have very little in common with it!. Adjacent markets are always good to go after. What are those markets for your product company?

6. Free Trial/Free-Paid Versions

Free Trial versions may be necessary for scaling your user base initially and converting them later on. Free Trials may have expiry dates but free versions without any expiry dates can provide data lock-in. Once a client or a consumer’s data is in your software, inertia may prevent them from switching and you can convert them to a paid one at some point in time. In some cases like LinkedIn, free and paid versions can co-exist and you can still have a profitable company. The free version may have some limits and if the limits are too onerous for intensive users, they may convert to a paid version. However, it is always better to provide as many of the features you can in the free version and not make it too much of cripple-ware! The free version should be fully functional for most of the simple stuff all of your users. If minimum functionality is not there for accomplishing something meaningful, free versions will only put users off. I hated free versions that don’t tell me after I have put in a lot of data in and then I cannot print anything or do something meaningful with it.

7. Service -Product Spin Outs

Tax preparation software companies also provide tax preparation services for consumers that cannot use the software, for whatever reason. This is a good example of spinning out a service from a product. If you are offering a service you may catch yourselves doing the same kinds of activities for your customers. If it can be automated or provided as a self-service online option for a fee, may be there is a product idea in there. That can be a service to product spin out.

When your product starts to take off, it may be time to streamline your offerings and create a road map of product variants and new products. It is better to have a process and some systematic thought put into this activity. Analysis of existing users, careful attention to what they are saying and which features of your product they are using; what they want new in your product or what new products they want,  can all help guide you in creating a product family and a road map. Having a set of dimensions in a tool kit helps  a software product company mix and match whatever is applicable to them to creating and rolling out this roadmap!

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there! – Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland

Leveraging Customer relationships as a Product Manager

There have been epics written on ways businesses should be:

  1. Identifying customers
  2. Acquiring new customers from competition
  3. Retaining customers
  4. Cross selling and up selling into existing customers
  5. Leveraging Customers for expanding business

For a Product Manager, who has to deal with many internal and external entities, Customer is by far one of the most business critical entities that he has to deal with. And rightly so, since it’s the customers who not only pay for your product but help in innovation, evangelizing product and most importantly give you the credibility to make the right product / business decision and the confidence to stand by it.

Every organization has different dynamics around customer management. Hence as a Product Manager, once you get into a new organization you have to feel your way into the customer management dynamics. Let’s focus on some of the common trends and techniques used for successfully getting a handle on building successful Customer relationships.

1. Identifying Customers:

One of the first and the foremost tasks is to identify the customer. There are two types of customer:

  • Internal Customer: These can be folks within in your organization who use your product or service to assist your external customer or use the product / service on behalf of your external customer. As a Product Manager you should give their voice a significant ear, since they can not only share their experience but also be a voice for external customer. Another benefit is that since they are part of your organization you can leverage them for beta testing, brain storming ideas, hand holding external customer and even for evangelizing products
  • External Customer: These are your paying customer. As a company you have made a promise to them for delivering a product / service and that must be kept. You should categorize the customers in terms of their value to the organization:
  • Revenue (current and potential)
  • Brand value
  • New market beach head
  • New geo beach head

 

2. Initial Customer Contact:

Initial customer contact is a crucial point in your relationship with the customer. Hence it is critical that you do all the necessary research on the customer account prior to the meeting whether it’s in person meeting or on the phone. The per-call prep can help you gain insights into customers:

  • Business
  • Current issues
  • Temperament

 

As part of this initial introduction to the Customer, you must establish credibility by highlighting your relevant past experiences and listen intently by being the fly on the wall. One the key things to remember is that as a Product Manager you must align and fit well into the Sales team dynamics, since they are typically the owner of the customer relationships.

3. Basic Ground Rules for Ongoing Customer Engagement:

Once your initial introduction is done, managing the ongoing customer contact is delicate balancing act. A customer managed properly can help take your product to the next level along with its revenue.

  • You must establish basic ground rules:
  • Reviewing meeting agenda with the sales team
  • Sending meeting agenda in advance to the customer
  • Follow through plan after the meeting
  • Set up meeting success criteria
  • You have to be careful not to overwhelm the Customer with long and frequent meetings since it can cause confusion and delay in reaching your goal. This is especially true when you and your Customers are geographically apart. Crisp, succinct and to the point conversation is critical for ongoing communication with any Customer.
  • Remember the Buddha story about teaching Nirvana to a starving disciple? As long as the disciple was starving, there was no way he would have been interested in learning about Nirvana. Similarly, focus on the immediate needs of your Customer before offering him advance solutions. Once you solve Customer’s immediate business problems, he will be interested in working with you since trust in the relationship is built.
  • It’s critical to set expectations when you have conversation with Customers. Typically, if you ask customers to share their pain points, they will open the floodgates and expect those pain points to be fixed immediately. Hence before asking the Customer to open the floodgates, you should make sure that you set the right Customer expectations so that Customer doesn’t loose interest and let down. No one wants to tell the same story again and again, especially if your organization is expected to fix at some point. This same principle goes for sharing product and services roadmap. You should help Customers understand that documents like these are for confidential and for directional purposes only.

 

These basic principles for managing customer interaction will vary based on geography, industry vertical, business model, company size, number of products, product life cycle, etc. But, if followed consistently will take your business to the next level by forging long lasting relationships with your loyal Customers…

 

Enabling Product Managers to manage Product Experience

In my last post, Product Manager, or Product Experience Manager, I described the disparate features and experiences that got broken in SiteZ and made the case that product management team should be responsible for overall product experience. In the final post of this series, I will present my views on how product management team should manage experience so that such issues can be minimized or avoided. Note that I am not talking about creating initial product experience or its next version, which is a topic of itself. I will focus only on managing the product as it goes through incremental changes.

There are 3 questions that must be answered by product management team at all times (and should be asked periodically):

  1. Are we seeing all the activities we should be seeing?
  2. Are we processing all the activities we see?
  3. Are we making good decisions based on our processing outcomes?

Product Experience Contour

To answer first question, it is important to understand the boundaries of the product experience that you wish to provide, what I call Product Experience Contour. If you define this too narrowly, you will miss out on lots of user and system activities that you should pay attention to. If you define it too broadly, you will be inundated with activities that are not useful and you will be stretched thin. There are 3 approaches to draw this contour:

  1. Persona-driven: If you have created personas (a realistic and detailed description of a fictitious user who represents a category of target audience for the product), they are good starting point to define these contours. Any activity in your organization that impacts or is impacted by a persona is usually a candidate for being on your radar. For example, if I am a persona for SiteZ (someone interested in learning from experienced people, but not interested in changing jobs), the product management team needs to ensure they are plugged into what the other group is promising and offering me. Note that in this case, I may not be a persona SiteZ cares about, which is a marketing and positioning strategy.
  2. Use case driven: If you have created use cases (UML, flowcharts, long documents, whatever) to describe how user roles interact with your system, that also is a good starting point though it may not be comprehensive. You can start by looking at the alternate and adjacent flows the particular user roles can go through on your system and see if those need to be on your radar. Use cases are more constrained because they describe your understanding at the time of product creation, while persona allows for more contemporary interpretation.
  3. Data-driven: While this may be hard (depending on how evolved your data analytics team is), this can be a very useful way to draw the contour. If you are able to analyze the data available for your system for past user interactions, you should be able to enumerate user activities (along with frequency of use) that you are interested in. The problem in this approach is that if some flows can’t be completed successfully by the user, or your data capture is not comprehensive, you may not get to know about some flows.

If possible, you should use more than one approaches above to draw the contours. Usually, persona-driven is a great way to draw initial contours, validate it with the data from your analytics, and then use data-driven approach to detect new user activities that might be important to include in the contour. In my case, it is entirely possible that none of my activities were ever tagged as useful activities to track, since these are not primary use cases (except the first one – trying to register to join the chat with the guest).

Information Sources and Management Systems

To answer second question, it is very important to look at 2 aspects:

  1. Information Source: As a user interacts with the organization, information is generated at many different places. It is very important for product management to be well-connected to these sources and make sure they are getting the information frequently. A few of the sources are:
    1. Data Analytics: As mentioned above, data analytics is a great source for information and must be harnessed properly.
    2. Direct User connect: There are many ways to connect directly with a sample set of users and keep learning about their experiences from them – product blogs, twitter, facebook and other social media channels are very effective if users can stay engaged.
    3. Be the user: It is surprising to see how little product managers use their own products on a regular basis. While being your own user may not be the greatest way to design a new product, it is a great way to keep tab on how things are going. Depending on the product, product managers can enlist their family and friends to be regular users and give feedback.
    4. Other departments in the org: Many departments interact with the users Product Managers want to know about, so it is very important to have a good flow of information from these departments. Typically, Marketing, Sales, Support, and Training teams can have good information about the user that should be captured.
  2. Information Management Systems: How information is captured, stored, and disseminated is very important for effective processing. Most activities can’t be processed in real time. Processing can mean many different things – I mean it in the sense of understanding, clarifying, analyzing, ranking and other handling of data. Product management teams need to procure, and use a management system that serves the purpose, and avoid leaving information in emails, chat boxes, whiteboards, or in their minds.

Good Decision-Making Process

To answer 3rd question, we need to make sure we have a good decision-making process in place which is used all the time. A good decision is a collaborative effort, and it is a process rather than a moment. It requires lots of data (which your information sources and management systems can provide), and it requires following a rational decision-making process. Such a decision-making process has following characteristics:

  1. Right stakeholders in the decision-making are identified.
  2. Participants are contributors and idea-providers, not spectators.
  3. Decision-making criteria (how will different options be ranked and prioritized) is defined before solution options are figured out.
  4. Personal responsible for the decision (and its consequences) is clearly identified (and it must be a person, and not a group).
  5. Once the decision is made, it is communicated, along with the rationale for making this particular decision.

In this context, since we are talking about incremental changes to product, the decision-making criteria should be known upfront and should be applied consistently. Impact of a change needs to be validated against all the known implications to the personas we care for, and this should be a key data in the decision-making process.

Evangelizing Product Management role

Even when you have great answers to the questions above, it is important to enlist the support of rest of the organization in keeping product experience awesome for the user. To do this, product managers need to be product evangelists who go out and talk about the product and their role as the guardian of product experience, to whoever cares to listen, and whichever platform they find. Once enough people in the organization realize that they should talk to you whenever they think about tinkering with the product experience, you will have created the strongest source of information about user activities and your product will thrive.

One final time, let me go through the list of issues, and show how they could be caught if above is done well:

Issue Solution
They misled the user about the time it takes to register. Evangelism would make sure they talk to product team, and good decision-making process would ensure that either advert is corrected, or product is fixed.
They didn’t allow the user to abort the registration attempt gracefully (which left the email address behind and created rest of the mess). Good decision-making process would ensure right prioritization, and if feature is not prioritized, user is provided enough information about what to do in this situation.
They were not forthcoming about who is sending me these spam emails (the email address was hidden with a display name that was the advertiser’s). Being connected to user (or enlisting friends and family as users) might flag the mail as inappropriately crafted (you are receiving this mail because.. line should be at the top somewhere).
They exposed a feature to me (unsubscribe) which didn’t work Good decision-making process should ensure that an alternative exists if this feature is not going to be implemented, and that user is told about it honestly
They didn’t give me an easy way to delete my account – emails bounced, UI didn’t have a button to delete, etc. Good decision-making process would ensure right prioritization, and if feature is not prioritized, user is provided enough information about what to do in this situation.

To be fair to SiteZ, it is hard to do all this because these are elements of organization culture and everything can’t be written down as a process and followed. Also, it is entirely possible, that they are indeed doing all this (though I highly doubt this!) and still I became a victim. Such caveats aside, I think this is a good discussion about product experience and hopefully companies will focus more on product experience than what they do today.

This concludes my series on Product Experience Management. I look forward to your comments and thoughts on the topic.

SMBs and Indian Software Product Industry: Intertwined Fortunes

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ― Winston Churchill

Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs), the growth engine of India, are on the threshold of a tremendous opportunity. Globalization of trade and the rapid proliferation of computing and communication technologies are affording them a platform to expand their reach to national and global markets and compete head-to-head with global players. But on the flip side, those SMBs that do not recognize and capitalize on this wave quickly are likely to be swept away by the stiff global competition. If SMBs are to successfully counter global competition in their own backyard and elsewhere, they need to adopt software technology on a large scale, enabling them to run their businesses efficiently and effectively. But, few SMBs have the financial muscle or the technical know-how necessary to implement customized software solutions. Therefore, the majority of 13 million SMBs would count on standard business application software that requires minimum upfront investment and ongoing maintenance, to fuel their growth. Such software is distinct from the software deployed in large corporations and I refer to this as ‘Small Business Application Software (SBAS)’ to distinguish it from large enterprise application software.

Business application software (SBAS) such as accounting software, ERP, CRM etc., offers multiple benefits to SMBs –

  • As shown by research, SBAS significantly enhances the internal productivity of SMBs as well as their ability to manage relationships with vendors and customers, leading to superior firm performance.
  • It forces SMBs to adopt standard processes and best practices, moving them rapidly up the quality and value curve.
  • Most important of all, by streamlining day-to-day operations, it not only frees up the entrepreneur’s time for strategic planning but also assists her with the tools needed to make informed strategic decisions.

 

The question now arises – How can Indian SMBs get the right fuel for their growth? This is where a vibrant Indian software product industry plays a critical role. Indian SMBs cannot realize productivity and performance gains from software that is designed for developed markets. This is because the business environment in India (and other emerging markets) is substantially different from that of developed markets. It is volatile, with frequent regulatory changes, and rife with institutional and infrastructural challenges. For instance, there were 340 updates to Indian tax laws last year. That’s more than one tax law update every business day! Therefore, SMBs need software products that can buffer them from such volatility and help overcome the challenges associated with operating in this unique and dynamic environment. This is possible only when products are designed specifically for the Indian SMBs – and this is best done by a strong indigenous software product industry.

Indian software product companies are better positioned than foreign firms to support the Indian SMB market. This is because,

  • They have lower cost structures which allow them to meet the stringent price-performance expectation of Indian SMBs.
  • Further, because of their familiarity with the operating environment, they can build effective channels to drive software awareness and adoption among Indian SMBs- remember that Indian SMBs are more like enterprise customers than individual buyers in that they expect suppliers to sell to them.

 

In summary, there is a symbiotic relationship between SMB growth and a robust software product industry in India. SMBs need the software product industry to power the next phase of their growth and make them globally competitive. At the same time, the Indian software product industry, having missed out on the individual productivity and communication software wave, can leverage the large SMB market in India to establish itself as a global leader in the SBAS space. In other words, software product industry is the fuel for the SMB engine and the SMB engine can drive the Indian software product industry towards SBAS leadership. By moving in lockstep and moving quickly, India can create a competitive SMB sector and a vibrant software product industry.

Platforms and Verticals—What to Build on and for Whom

An important decision is about development and deployment platforms. If your product is targeted for a specific operating system, the choice is obvious. When the solution has to be platform neutral, or if the deployment will be controlled by you (SaaS model), then the common options are Open Source (Linux) and Java or Microsoft Windows. Always keep in mind the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the customer.

Open source in theory benefits from the availability of a huge number of re-usable components and tools contributed by an army of individual programmers. While open source is technically free, limited support and inter-operability between different open source products may lead to higher cost of development and support.

Microsoft now offers free development tools to start-ups for 3 years under their BizSpark program, but licensing cost of servers and other software for product deployment, may be high.
Other issues may impact platform choice. An implementation which is tightly integrated with specific platform features and interfaces will limit your ability to go cross-platform. Conversely, leveraging the tight integration and inter-oper-ability of various servers on a specific OS can substantially increase the product’s value and ease of use.

Web 2.0 ventures and CIOs have new options to develop applications with minimal investment. Salesforce.com is promoting the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) concept, which it says represents the start of Web 3.0. Called Force.com, it enables companies to build and deploy enterprise applications on-demand without having their own infrastructure. Core business applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), human resource management (HRM) and supply chain management (SCM), can be developed in just 5-10% of the time that is normally required for custom development, and deployed almost instantly.

Your OS decision should be driven by business potential. If a specific platform dominates or is acceptable to a majority of your potential buyers, then opt for it. Spend your engineering bandwidth on providing maximum compatibility and inter-operability with other applications on this OS, to improve total value to clients.