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SaaS #MadeinIndia Products – HR & Recruitment

This post and the one’s following this are attempts to improve the coverage and knowledge of Indian made Product companies who are solving issues with their SaaS type solutions. This is not a comprehensive list, and if there are some companies whom we have missed and should be in this list, please feel free to email us or drop in a comment and we will add it to the list, this hopefully will turn into a Crowd Sourced list of companies in the HR & Recruitment space.
Some of the HR & Recruitment based Products with a SaaS twist and the #madeinindia component in an alphabetical order:
1. Adrenalin – Adrenalin is a business-critical Human Resource Software. It provides critical tools such as HR software solution, payroll software solution, HRMS software solution, performance management system, attendance and training management software solutions.
2. Ascent Payroll – Employee Self service, Payroll Software.
3. Cynergis – HR Outsourcing, Payroll & HRMS software which has been around for over 10 years, and also has a major SaaS play involved.
4. Employwise – HR software for integrated employee life-cycle management delivered as SaaS.
5. Emportant – Emportant.com provides Internet based HR and Payroll Management software. Based on cloud technologies, it provides highly reliable and worry free software environment that you can just use without any other software management overheads.
6. EmpXtrack – EmpXtrack is a software product of Saigun Technologies Pvt. Ltd.. The company has been focused on HR solutions for the last 10 years and is a CMMI Level 3 company implementing best software development practices since inception.
7. Fluous – PowerApps – Adaptive HR Systems is the premier HRMS solution being by both large and growing organisations.
8. Greytip – Greytip Software is a leading HR & Payroll software solutions company. They offer a wide range of HR solutions (from on-boarding to exit) for customers big and small across industry verticals.
9. Hackerearth – Help you hire programmers for your companies.
10. HireCraft – Talent Management is a tool to help you manage all your employees and talent via this product suite by HireCraft.
11. Hire Rabbit – HireRabbit helps you design a beautiful career site on facebook, boost your referral recruitment, automate manual social recruiting activities, and provide metrics that matter!
12. HR Mantra – HR Mantra provides SaaS based Employee Self Service, HRIS, HR & Payroll Software on the Cloud.
13. Jombay – the smartest way to find jobs in India on the next generation job portal.
14. KServeHRMS is a flagship product with of Kallos. The HRMS product is known for its unique employee self service centric model for integrated HRMS software
15. MinervaHR Suite – A product from TenXLabs designed to house all information pertaining to every employee in an association from Recruitment to Retirals.
16. Mettl – Mettl is an online assessment and testing platform to measure, analyze and improve people skills. It is ideal for companies who want to run multi-competency assessments for their prospective hires or existing employees. We focus deeply on the science of assessments and combine it with advanced technology to deliver highly valid and reliable tests.
17. PeopleWorks –  A flexible, robust, customizable, and seamless cloud based solution for efficient management of the HR lifecycle of every employee in the organization.
18. Recruiterbox – Recruiterbox is the easiest way to receive and manage job applications to your company. It is more efficient than email and simpler than any other recruitment software. They are Bangalore based, but have been getting great traction outside and within India for their product.
19. Saral Paypack – Payroll Software for managing all your employees in one place, SaaS based web platform.
20. Shawman Software – From recruitment to retirement, the entire gamut of managing human capital is supported by HRMS.
21. SumHR – SumHR is a HRMS product, automating all HR requirements with a Free Employee & Leave Management system product integrated as well.
22. Synergita – Software for the people, performance management and continuous feedback.
23. Talentpool – Talentpool is a recruitment software for HR Departments of companies. It helps them streamline their recruitment processes, meet hiring targets and get instant reports to track performance.
24. Valuehire – A complete workflow automation solution for recruitment agencies and
companies of all sizes.
As mentioned, if (and we must have) we have missed out on some companies, either yours or another you know of, and would like it to be added to the list, please comment below here, or email us.
Our Goal is to create a great compilation of SaaS Product companies made out of India and hopefully get more businesses to try using these products as well compared to other counter-parts.
The next list of SaaS Product companies made from India, will have special focus on Social Media Tools. Watch out for that in a few days.
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Guerilla Marketing 2.0 for Product Startups!

Jay Conrad Levinson, father of Guerilla Marketing defines it very simply as going after conventional goals with unconventional means! When you are a product startup, trying to build a business on little to zero money, you need plenty of unconventional means. With the rise of social media, viral word-of-mouth options with web and mobile global connectivity, it has never been easier to do guerilla marketing! As you will see in  the rest of this article, social media can be a part of guerilla marketing and that makes it 2.0!

However, guerilla marketing requires lots of time, energy, imagination and information on your part rather than money (in Jay Conrad Levinson’s words again!)

First, it is worth watching him describe guerilla marketing in his own words! It is worthwhile to remember that he invented this way before we had social media but since then they have made what he was trying to do a lot easier!

Time, energy, imagination and information are not easy to muster or master easily when you are short of money, trying to get to the next level of getting angel funding or venture funding or just trying to keep your business afloat! But that’s when guerilla marketing could provide the big breaks you may be looking for in terms of customer adoption!

Here’s a video of the Unidesk CEO talking about how they performed guerilla marketing and the tools they used throughout the lifecycle of their product. Right from inception, when they did not have a product to when they had a product and trying to get repeat customers!  They used different tools, some of them social media, at various stages of the product development lifecycle and for different purposes. For example, their use of SurveyMonkey to survey potential users of their product BEFORE they had a product is remarkable. Unidesk is in the business of desktop virtualization. All they had to do was ask potential users what they needed using a survey and seems like they got MORE than what they needed by way of inputs on what was needed in their product. This ties in with the Lean Startup movement where you get out of the office and talk to potential prospects before implementing anything.

Very interesting to see the variety of tools used during different stages of the lifecycle of their product (inception to repeat customers). Most importantly, their use of measurement of everything is key in seeing what works and changing tools or approaches quickly! After all, time, energy, imagination and information is not easy to come by, and cannot be wasted even if you can do many things for free these days!

Here’s another YouTube video about understanding the Chain of Conversion. Software product founders may also know this as the Funnel. This video makes a very important point about understanding the way your own funnel works, pinpointing the weaknesses in your funnel, working backwards from any point in the funnel, and fixing these weaknesses systematically. This is where you may need to employ different guerilla marketing approaches depending upon what is suitable at the different stages of the funnel.

Finally, here’s a stunning YouTube video. I don’t want to say anything more since that anything would be a spoiler!  Watch it for yourself! All I want to say is that this one has 43 million views as of this writing! Rest assured that this Guerilla Marketing effort was highly successful!

Many users on twitter, facebook and instagram believe they are the star of their very own reality show when they are stalked by a mellow mushroom! – Entrepreneur Magazine talking about Mellow Mushroom’s (restaurant) guerilla marketing effort.

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Geeks with Dilli Wallas

Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. #GOAP is headed to India and after visiting Bangalore & Mumbai the geeks will be visiting Delhi from 27th to 2nd March ’13. We (91Springboard, ProductNation & Moonlighting) are hosting #GOAP while they are in Delhi. Come join us to meet the #GOAP team, most awesome startups & entrepreneurs in Delhi-NCR and other cool folks accompanied with a light lunch on 28th Feb ’13 from 11am to 2pm.

Geeks on a Plane (#GOAP) is program initiated by 500 Startups, a startup accelerator from Silicon Valley. Through this initiative, founders Dave McClure and Christen O’Brien travel to technology markets with geeks and startup enthusiasts. The participants come from companies like GE, Wahooly, XG Ventures, SoftLayer, JESS3, Qualcomm Ventures, SendGrid, Google and more.

Tentative agenda:
1100 – 1115 hrs – Welcome & Introductions
1115 – 1130 hrs – Talk by Dave McClure – Go Local or Go Global (or both)
1130 – 1145 hrs – Talk by Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder, iSPIRT – Surfing the Innovation Wave
1145 – 1245 hrs – Lessons Learnt from Product Startups in Emerging Economies – Ambarish Gupta (Knowlarity), Aloke Bajpai (iXIGO), Kavin Bharti Mittal (Hike) Ketan Kapoor (Mettl), Paras Chopra (Visual Website Optimiser), Rajat Garg(SocialAppsHQ); Moderated by Kunal Bajaj – Advisor, iSPIRT Founder Circle
1245 – 1400 hrs – Networking Over Light Lunch with the Geeks

Venue: 91springboard

Entry free: Rs 500. Register Online. We have very limited seats, please do register online by filling up the form and we will confirm your participation. Here is an opportunity to meet and interact with the geeks. Register now to avoid disappointment. No on-site registrations will be allowed.

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Customer support lessons from the Yellow Tire Company

It’s quite a matter of pride for the Dabbawalas of Mumbai to be counted right up there in the performance toppers chart. With efficiency metrics that any manager would die for, I got the urge to look at another parallel hallmark which has been able to achieve customer delight in a quintessentially Indian way – thriving on chaos yet with a quiet air of dependability. 

There would hardly be a person who has not noticed ads of the Yellow Tire Company. It’s those innocuous looking yellow rings hanging on a tree promising help to the stranded motorist with a flat tyre! I may be forgiven for calling them the YT Company but that’s only because they have taken customer service to levels which most companies strive to beat. They’re omnipresent and so willing to help we’ve almost taken them for granted. I like to think of those yellow rings as smiley faces, always available to pump a little joy into your tyres, no matter what the time. The symbol of this promise of ‘odd-hours’ service is their mobile number painted in bold colors, saying “don’t hesitate to call me”! 

Support is always one of those thorny bushes that grows in all directions and becomes difficult for a Startup to tame. We’ve often seen support teams either bending backwards to please, or being so stiff they earn themselves an agitated customer. With the predisposition to meet SLAs and ill-designed performance indices, there’s little inclination to think of preventive actions. So the quest for support excellence is sacrificed at the altar of daily efficiency. 

Even when a Startup is relentlessly driving towards product launch and go to market strategies, its not too hard to get started with smart strategies that insure high levels of customer satisfaction. In our company we introduced ticketing systems, support policies and standard operating procedures even before we had our 10th customer. Yet, customers (and our support team) kept preferring email and phone conversations to quickly resolve issues. To top this, the customers who got used to phone and email support were the most reluctant to adopt systems when we introduced them. 

Here are a few observations from our journey may be of some use in yours: 

  • Introduce the primary support conversation tool as a part of your product, not as an afterthought.
  • Cajole, convince, convert users to a support platform and monitor it regularly. Once a week is good for a startup founder to make it stay the course.
  • Lead by example – your team will treat customers as well as they see you doing. This is perhaps more effective then ‘telling’ them do’s and don’ts.
  • You have your fair share of early adopters whom you’ve personally given support at some time. Convince them that they’d get better and more consistent support if they use the Helpdesk instead of calling you. I can promise you this works!
  • Create pre-cooked solutions that address common problems. Smart cooks keep the ingredients ready and are better prepared to meet their diner’s expectations.
  • Don’t just pre-cook – actively encourage consumption by guiding users actively to seek out the solutions knowledge base. You can do this by including random guide tips in your Helpdesk email footers with a link to the knowledge base, linking it prominently from your website, your application menu and so on.
  • Integrate customer guidebooks into the product so they have help at hand when they need it the most.
  • Solicit customer feedback through periodic surveys. Customers want to feel their opinions are valued and will forgive a lot of mistakes if we just listen. And when listening, its good to take their suggestions as constructive criticism. It’s free advice, and valuable.
  • And lastly, coming back to the Yellow Tire Company strategy… tell them they can get after hours support for any super-critical problem. They’ll love you for it and the effort to deliver this is far less than the value of the accolades that follow. If you’re in B2B like us, remember that your customer’s business ops depend on your software and 10pm is no excuse to not talk to them. 

You’ll grow eventually into a larger team, provide 24×7 support and have managers in every function to analyze and improve. Customers are and always remain your most valuable asset and for a Startup the leverage on this asset is even greater. Give them the Yellow Tire treatment and they’ll watch out for you! 

What have been your experiences in staffing your customer support as a startup ? Would love to hear about your challenges and victories. 

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CIOSE selects 8 #MadeInIndia product companies to showcase on global platform

CIO Strategy Exchange (CIOSE) has selected 8 companies from India from the #MadeInIndia tag to showcase them on a global platform. Its director Ernest M. von Simson reviewed many applications that were submitted and chose 8 companies to showcase when he is here in Bangalore. The eight companies are Kreeo, Cloudpact, OrangeScape, i7 Networks, C2il, ArrayShield, Anoosmar, and FieldEZ.

CIOSE received many applications from early stage technology startups to those who have spent few years in the industry, with exciting ideas across Big Data, social networking, Analytics, healthcare, education, mobile applications, security, etc., during the one week period starting January 31, 2013 until February 8 2013. The final 8 were selected after several rigorous rounds of screening by CIOSE. 

The demo from these selected companies will happen in Bangalore on Februay 26th and 27th in iGate premises. 

Here are the selected companies and their product details:

  1. Kreeo: Due to information overload, inefficient information discovery and ineffective management of knowledge and learning.  Despite the best of tools from biggest of vendors organizations are not able to significantly enhance knowledge worker productivity.  Kreeo’s innovative “Collective Intelligence” framework and product uniquely combines the power of social computing, PaaS and Big Data in a unified framework (winner of Nasscom Emerge 50 2012 in Innovation category) is used by companies like Standard Chartered Bank to evolve to next level.
  2. CloudPact’s Marble Enterprise: CloudPact Marble is an award winning, unique enterprise mobility platform, with the world’s best cloud hosted mobile application development IDE, smooth enterprise connectivity, security and comprehensive management tools. We help our customers mobile enable their enterprise and extend their business frontier to very edge of mobile reach.  We provide mobility solutions across industry verticals which can be deployed in public clouds, private clouds and also dedicated, traditional IT infrastructure.
  3. OrangeScape: Cloud has disrupted the middleware market with Platform as a Service. All larger enterprise are evaluating PaaS offerings currently. However, there three key capabilities enterprises are looking a) Private Cloud Deployment b) Productivity with greater price performance c) Specialized for B2B Apps. OrangeScape Visual PaaS elegantly address these 3 key requirements when compared Generic PaaS offerings. OrangeScape is featured among the Global Top 10 PaaS companies in research reports of Forrester and Gartner.
  4. i7 Networks – PeregrineGuard: i7 Networks enables enterprises to “say Yes” to BYOD by providing an agentless paradigm for discovery and access control. Our premier offering in this space – PeregrineGuard – enables an intelligent, non-intrusive, clientless way of detecting all devices that are trying to connect to the corporate network. By the use of proprietary algorithms and sophisticated fingerprinting techniques, we extract highly granular information like device-type, device-class, OS, version, user of the device, etc; this information is used to provide device based differential access to corporate assets and to make sure sensitive data is provided right access to the right device type. It integrates with EAS and also provides authentication via AD and also denies access to all jailbroken/rooted/compromised devices. Only those devices that pass the company’s baseline configuration and are registered via EAS are allowed to connect to network for further access.
  5. C2il’s inciseEAM: inCiseEAM Asset life-cycle Management system takes the power, performance and possibilities of Asset management to an entirely new level. Built on a single software platform, inCiseEAM Asset life-cycle Management framework delivers a comprehensive view of all Asset types — production, facilities, transportation and IT — across your enterprise. This holistic perspective allows you to see all your Assets, as well as identify all the untapped potential within them. You gain the knowledge and control you need to closely align your organization’s goals with the overall goals of your business.
  6. ArrayShield’s ArrayShield IDAS: This product addresses the growing threat to enterprises from advanced malware/Trojan based attacks that steal the credentials and attack the enterprise in real time. By protecting the critical organizational data from advanced malware attacks using innovative two factor authentication, enterprises can minimize their security risk and protect their organization data and brand. Globally, Two factor authentication is now being considered as a must have much like anti-virus or firewalls. As per Gartner, 2FA market is expanding by 30% globally and many of the current 2FA mechanisms are flawed like that of hardware tokens, sms based solutions. Hence ArrayShield is uniquely positioned to capture the 2Bn$ global market that is growing at 30% CAGR.
  7. Anoosmar’s Vaultize: The current CIO challenges: 1. with the rapid consumerization of IT and proliferation of consumer solutions like dropbox in enterprise, enterprise IT is looking to control the data loss that might happen through these cloud services 2. traditional file sharing is too cumbersome for roaming users endpoint data (e.g. laptops) is hardly backed up and encrypted. Traditional backups are geared for structured-data (application data) and not unstructured (files) Vaultize provides a unified platform for file backup, file sharing, endpoint encryption and mobility. Vaultize offers this through public cloud, appliance or private-cloud/on-premise. Vaultize’s at-source encryption together with de-duplication helps enterprises adopt cloud based backup and file sharing by eliminating concerns about security, data privacy and compliance. The patent-pending technology secures data even before it leaves endpoints. 
  8. FieldEZ: is an On-Demand mobile based solution that makes managing mobile workforce such as field sales or service teams very efficient and easy. With features such as call management & scheduling, enterprise collaboration, time & location reporting, integrated bar code scanning and payment options, FieldEZ provides valuable field insights to management and boosts the productivity of field personnel while making a positive difference to their work.  It works on common feature phones and smartphones, with a highly responsive user interface, robust security, ease of configuration and web-services for integration. It can work as a standalone Field Service / Sales Management solution or provide the “last mile” mobility to incumbent backend systems.

ProductNation and CIOSE take this opportunity to thank all the participants and like to congratulate the selected 8 companies.

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Zomato “gets” foodies, and it gets them so well

I am a foodie. And a big Zomato fan, no pun intended anywhere. Here, I am going to talk about everything we foodies love about Zomato and all the things it could do better.

For the uninitiated, Zomato is a restaurant discovery platform with 74,800 restaurants listed across 19 cities and 4 countries, and claims to have served 62.5 million foodies till date. More simply, it is about food and where to find the best of it.

So this is how I met Zomato. I was in college till 2009, and whenever I needed to know of new places to eat or hang out at, I just asked a couple of friends and I had more recommendations than I could handle. But once I entered the world of technology, everything in life started to begin with a Google search. But that’s not how I discovered Zomato. That’s how I discovered that websites of restaurants, when they have one, are completely useless. They talk about everything except what I need to know.

I got to know of Zomato in a rather funny way. I was looking for some kickass About Us pages on the web, and a friend of mine pointed me towards Zomato’s team page on Facebook. It spoke the same language I spoke, had this young and fun feel about it, quirky bios of everyone on the team. I loved it. Then I gave their product a try. And I uttered — “My precious.”

And we have been together ever since. It’s been a rather smooth relationship, and now I will tell you of all the things I love about it.

When do you look for a new place to eat at? Most likely when you are in the mood for some good Italian food but have been to little Italy thrice in the last fortnight. Or you are at a friend’s place in your shorts and floaters, probably a little drunk, and want food delivered to your doorstep? Hyderabadi Biryani has not been very kind on your stomach lately, so you want to go for someplace lesser spicy. Zomato delivers on both counts by allowing you to search for restaurants by fine dining or delivery in your city. There’s also catching up and nightlife if you are in the let’s-go-hangout mood. And if you like searches the Google way, then you have a simple Search bar you can throw in all your keywords into.

But that is no rocket science, is it? No it isn’t. Actually most of the things that Zomato does isn’t rocket science. It’s just that they do it well, really well.

Then you get your search results in 0.035 seconds in a beautifully laid out page with everything you need. Ratings, timings, cost for two, bar or no bar, cash or card, reviews from people you follow (more on this later) and more. And then you can apply filters like wifi, outdoor seating, buffet and whatnot to find that perfect someplace for you. Again, all of it in what I can only call a lovely interface.

Then you choose a restaurant, and are presented with all the details you need on the restaurant. Up-to-date scanned copies of the complete menu (which they go door-to-door and collect manually), photos of the place and food (not the best, but manageable) and most importantly reviews. Comprehensive reviews from foodies, big foodies and connoisseurs. The reviews tell you everything about the ambiance of the place, the service, the dishes to try and then they give you more photos.

The reviews were not always these helpful. Then Zomato decided to create a food social network of sorts, and there has been no looking back ever since. You can follow foodies, so every time they add a new review, it comes up in your notification bar. Passionate foodies and wannabe food critics use this as an opportunity to educate their followers about food and the best of it.

As the number of reviews you post increase and more people find it helpful, you go from foodie to connoisseur, and you also become eligible for the leaderboard which is displayed in each city’s homepage. The catch is you have to enter a review having more than 50 words, and when you are doing that, you might as well write a good detailed review. And with the recent Instagram integration in the reviews, you can add pics for other foodies to drool over.

Sounds like the perfect love story, doesn’t it? Well, almost. There are some things that Zomato could have done better though.

The ads. They are some of the ugliest ads I have seen on the web. Every time I search for restaurants, a bunch of these ads come up in the right panel. And every time I see them, my eyes bleed and a little part of me dies. I understand Zomato has to make money and restaurants work with shitty digital agencies, but there has to be a better way. Featured listings, photo albums, more details, whatever it is that they can make money from as long as the ugly ads can go out the window.

iPhone app. While it has seen big improvements over time, it still isn’t as good as the website experience. And the consistency is missing across the two interfaces. You can just search by location or cuisine on the app, not by delivery, dine out, catching up and the like. But an interesting feature is the instant recommendation that tells of you of a random new place near you — if you don’t like it, just shake the phone and a new recommendation will come up. I think I could use a variant of this on the web interface as well.

The tags. A cafe is a cafe to me, so when it comes up in my search for Italian food, I start getting cranky. And this happens because under the cuisines tag, the cafe has American, European and Italian marked against it when it serves four dishes for each of those cuisines, and pretty bad one at that. Same with pubs having Indian, Mughlai, Chinese and Italian slapped against them. Of course, I have no qualms if the cafe or the pub serves really good food, but when I am looking out for good Indian food, neither a pub or a cafe or a restaurant having a total of three Indian dishes is what I am looking for.

Notifications. While I like to be notified when someone I am following posts a new review, why do I have to be notified when someone I follow follows someone else? I want to follow their food trail, but not every single thing they do.

All that said and done, I have to commend Zomato for everything it has done for us foodies, and for the industry as a whole. Only time will tell how it fares against the Yelps of the world as it expands into more mature markets, but it’s got an international product and the balls to take on the world.

I wish them all the best.

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Content Generation – The 10 commandments

Content Marketing is increasingly becoming a key strategy for product marketers. With prospects and customers ceasing to be passive and, on the contrary, actively gathering information, comparing product offerings and alternatives, product marketers are now turning to content marketing as a key strategy for their communication operations.

The purpose of Content Marketing is to create a scenario where your customers and prospects interact, react, engage and market on their own. Instead of publishing self-proclaiming ads, the focus has now shifted to providing content that the target audience finds relevant and resourceful.

The key question then is how to ensure you publish relevant and resourceful content for your target audience. The basis for any content marketing strategy is the content itself, and how you shape and mould your content can define your success. The following 10 Commandments of Content Generation will serve as an effective roadmap for your content marketing success

YOUR CONTENT SHALL NOT BE PROMOTIONAL
Your prospects don’t want to read self-promotional messages all the time. The key to winning your target audience over is building credibility and creating content that matters to readers.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE ORIGINAL
It does not matter how perfect you think your content is. The success lies in the appeal. The key to building brands and winning fans in the long term is creating content that is original, which is unique.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE RELEVANT
The content you create should be based on what your prospects are interested in and what is the most relevant in their space. Identify industry-relevant subject matter and popular topics before you create content. 

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE STRUCTURED
Your content needs a blueprint.  Structure your message first and then create the content. Your prospects demand more than a bunch of loosely related words from you.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE DIVERSIFIED
Your prospects consume content in various forms – text, pictures, videos, etc. Your content must not be restricted to a single type. Instead, diversify your content to keep the interest high.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL CARRY A THEME
What message are you trying to push to your audience? Your content should carry an underlying theme that is aligned to your end objectives and goals.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL ADDRESS NEEDS
Most of your prospects and customers want to read things that benefit them. Your display of a deep understanding of the challenges they face can elevate your target audience from being interested readers to a highly engaged audience.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE EASY TO UNDERSTAND
The content, when it reaches your prospects and customers, must be easy to understand. If your target audience is forced to make an effort, there’s very little chance that they’ll go through your content till the end.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE ENGAGING
The aim of your content generation is to attract and sustain the interest of your customers and prospects. Rather than making it one-directional, make your content engaging by including calls-to-action in your content – comment, subscribe, share, register, etc. Customer communication management should be a priority.

YOUR CONTENT SHALL BE BACKED BY PROOF
In today’s world, information is just a step away to be found and verified. Publishing content without enough proof can backfire as you may end up losing the credibility you built. You should use information, stats, reports and trends to back your content.

 

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EmployWise: Improving the ROI in employee lifecycle management

Effective employee lifecycle management is acquiring importance from a talent acquisition and retention perspective; from an employee satisfaction angle; as well as from a compliance and regulatory viewpoint. Many organizations, especially SMEs, are discovering to their dismay that the pile of unstructured employee data they have accumulated is a ticking time bomb. They suspect they are paying a price for poor record maintenance and employee management, but are not sure of the exact cost, or its implications.

The impact of poor employee lifecycle management could vary, but often includes an inability to quickly sift through granular employee records and performance metrics with any degree of confidence. This leaves organizations open to violation of immigration norms, wrongful termination charges, industry and local jurisdiction compliance penalties, productivity loss, fraud through inaccurate claims, growing recruitment costs, loss of assets and brand reputation through poor separation processes, etc. The problems become complex when the business grows from single proprietor to multi-unit operators across geographies.

But what’s an SME to do? Human resource management takes years to be codified. Processes around HR management (compensation and benefits, leave, attendance, travel, expenses, reimbursement, performance, hiring, learning and development, separation) and workflow can have gaps and leakages for years without being noticed. Replicating them across units with any degree of accuracy and consistency is a frustratingly uphill mission.

The problem is so large that it has drawn a number of entrepreneurs to try and solve it using technology and automation. With newer business models such as SaaS, pay-as-you-go technologies like cloud and anywhere-anytime access over mobile channels, the solutions are not only looking good, but are increasingly becoming affordable.

Which presents the single biggest problem to entrepreneurs trying to solve the problem: what’s the differentiator? Why should an organization opt for Solution A over Solution B, C, D….Z?

Sumeet Kapur, CEO of EmployWise an employee lifecycle management solution, took the long route to the answer. “Human relationships are very different from handling materials,” says Kapur, “People have names, not product codes. Human beings have memories and you have to treat each one as a segment of one.” EmployWise took this core philosophy and engineered it into their product. An early version of the product was launched in 2004 as Kapur and his team realized that India was turning into a service economy and employee lifecycle management would gain increasing attention. By 2008 EmployWise was officially launched. Today, the 9 modules of the product appear easy to use, can be integrated with existing HR management technologies (SAP, PeopleSoft etc) and giving instant access to best practices in a hosted pay-per-use-per-employee-per-module SaaS model.

At the moment EmployWise uses SMS to stay mobile, making it unnecessary to deploy fancy smart phone apps. In an Indian context, especially in relation to SMEs, this may appear to be a wise strategy – but one that is unlikely to remain a strength for long. Smart phone costs are coming down and SMEs have very compelling reasons to opt for mobile technologies. Mobile banking, communication, inventory management, sales tools, even mobile credit card payments etc are becoming affordable for SMEs over smart phones. Why would they want to remain with clunky SMS for HR? EmployWise must address this quickly if they are to remain relevant in a scenario where smart phones are already dominating.

The advantages of software products such as EmployWise extend to the ability to have one source of truth, they obviate the need for secondary data entry for analysis, empower employees through a self-service model, reduce the HR : employee ration to as much as 1 : 400 and allow companies to benchmark practices with those of their peer group. The last really depends on the density of customers EmployWise has within any given industry. At the moment, the company has 75+ customers – many from technology — and handles 32,000 employee records. The number is adequate to provide reasonable insights, especially in the technology sector where 40 to 60 per cent of the investment is in people – and where managing them well can produce quick ROI.

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Sustaining India’s IT Exports Growth: Why Products are the Way?

Going by its 12th five year plan projections, the Indian government expects that the IT/ITES exports from the country would reach $130 billion by FY 2016-17, up from $69 billion in FY 2011-12. That is a CAGR of 13.6%.

How realistic is it?
The Planning Commission’s (it  has got those figures from IT ministry which in turn would have consulted with the industry before suggesting it) projection is obviously based on the past trends. Between 2002-07, IT exports from India grew by a CAGR of 32.6%. In the next five years, between 2007-12, the IT exports registered a CAGR of 17.2%. Purely going by those number, a 13.6% growth does not seem too unrealistic for the period 2012-17.

But that does not give the real picture. While the government has its own five-year plan periods, and all its numbers are synchronized to those blocks of periods, the industries do not necessarily work that way, least of it, an exports industry.

Indian IT services exports industry had its distinctive growth periods. The period between 2003-04 to 2007-08, was the high growth period when, on an average, the exports grew 30% year on year, growing by a whopping 37.2% in 2004-05. Of course, the industry was much smaller.

The new phase began in 2008-09. From that year onwards, the industry has grown between 5-19%. In short, the growth of FY 2007-08, which belonged to another era, skews the figure for the five year period that the government has taken—2007-08 to  2011-12. A better idea, hence, would be to compare with the CAGR of the four year period 2008-09, which was 14.2%.

On a much bigger scale, is is possible to replicate that kind of growth, with business as usual. The current year growth is not likely to be more than 10-11%, considering that the top companies have grown by 9% in the first nine months. If the first year of the block shows a growth of 10%, it will be panglossian to believe that the exports will grow by 13.6% in the five year period.

That is, if we go on doing business as usual. The 12th Plan document also does not mention any new initiatives in this area that would make one hopeful, unlike in case of semiconductor and electronic design segments, where a lot of new initiatives are listed.

So, how do we sustain the growth? It is difficult to believe that changing a tax structure here or duty structure there for IT/ITES exports would help the industry grow. We need to look at comppletely new areas/new dynamics to make the industry growth accelerate.

I believe engineering services and software products are two such areas which have potential to drive the next phase of growth for Indian IT. Here are the reasons why I bet on these two

  1. Both these areas are not really completely new areas for Indian IT. There are some leve of action already and the world has noticed the ability of Indians in both these areas
  2. The opportunity and scope available to expand is immense. Hence, the growth will be sustainable for some time
  3. There are passionate people and organizations trying to furher the cause of both these segments.

With a little help from government in terms of incentives and promotion, these two segments, I believe, can drive the growth for the industry in the medium term.

This year’s budget could be a great beginning. The government could well begin by announcing some concrete incentives for encouraging creation of software products from India. Here are some of the ideas that are worth exploring (in the area of software products).

  • Creating direct tax incentives for companies engaged in creating software products
  • Incentivizing government department, agencies and private companies in India to buy made-in-India products through a mix of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives
  • Creating product-only SEZs
  • Instituting awards and honors for software products made in India
  • Encouraging software companies to create products for solving e-governnce problems in the country
  • Creating a comprehensive policy statement to encourage creation of Intellectual Property in computing/information sciences in India 
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Will B.PAC and iSPIRT Transform Urban Politics & the Software Product Industry Respectively?

While we usually focus on product, process and business model innovation as the main facets of innovation, some of the most impactful innovation can be the result of new organizational forms.

Take the case of India’s white revolution. This was driven by a unique 3-tier structure of organizations – the farmers’ cooperative at the village level as the basic organizational unit; a district-level federation of cooperatives with milk processing and marketing capabilities; and a state level apex body with brand and product management capabilities. And, behind this structure were larger organizations like the National Dairy Development Board at the national level that channelizes resources, support long-term investment activities, and accesses new knowledge and inputs. This arrangement takes advantage of flexibility – when required NDDB can look like an extension of the government, when required it is an independent body working with farmers’ cooperatives. This flexibility has helped it manage in a complex environment.

Last week saw the birth of some organizations nowhere as complex as the milk production structure, but with the potential to have major impact.

B.PAC

NR Narayana Murthy launched the Bangalore Political Action Committee or B.PAC as it is being called. This is the first time we are seeing an organization christened as a PAC in India, though this is a common term in the US. I presume this similarity is not just a matter of coincidence. PACs in the US are not political parties, but organizations created to advocate and support a particular agenda. The B.PAC has similar objectives. At one level it aims to restore the quality of life of the city of Bangalore. But at another level it is a pressure group for more political power to cities which are the value creation engines of a modern economy.

The B.PAC’s initial agenda is to enhance urban (read middle class, educated) voter enrolment and voter participation. They also promise to support candidates who back their agenda (new forms of city government, more resources, better urban planning, etc.) In the forthcoming assembly, parliament and municipal corporation elections. Subject, of course, to their meeting other criteria like no criminal cases against them, no record of corruption, etc.

B.PAC has been formed by a group of resourceful and successful individuals who have for long been expressing their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Mohandas Pai. It represents their response to many of the issues they have raised in the past falling on deaf ears, and their inability to have a sustained impact on the political system.

Of course, the “involvement” of successful industrialists in efforts to improve Bangalore is not new. During the chief ministership of SM Krishna (1999-2004), the Bangalore Agenda Task Force was created under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani. The BATF tried to play the role of a coordinating body, creating a platform for different civic agencies, citizen groups and the state government to come together. While the BATF did manage to do some of this as well as have new bus shelters and toilets built, it was a body without any political legitimacy and was hastily disbanded after the Congress lost the 2004 elections in the state.

Newspaper reports indicate the existence of a similar attempt in the last few years under the chairmanship of Rajeev Chandrashekar. However, this one has been low key, restricting its role to that of a think tank. But again the long term impact doesn’t appear to be substantial.

B.PAC is an interesting development because it shows an inching of rich, successful “middle class” entrepreneurs towards electoral politics. Though apolitical in the sense that it is not a political party, B.PAC clearly has a political agenda. It represents a growing realization that technocratic approaches can’t solve India’s problems. It also suggests that the efforts to create alternate public spaces such as those tried out by Janagraha or the BATF itself could have only limited success. The creation of the B.PAC is a welcome development, for the next logical step will be immersion in electoral politics. I hope to see a party such as the German Green Party emerging out of this process with the ability to push urban issues at the national level.

iSPIRT

The second organizational innovation in the last week was the creation of iSPIRT – the Indian Software Product Industry Round Table. It came into the public view amidst controversy with a Times of India headline announcing it as a breakaway trade body from Nasscom. iSPIRT’s spokesmen were quick to assert that the organisation is an industry round table (not a trade body), that it will not offer membership, and that the founders will continue to be part of Nassom (Disclosure: I am a part of the iSPIRT Founding Circle).

I am excited by the prospect of iSPIRT because of the new activities it is promoting. An important role it will play is to act as a market maker. India has lakhs of small and medium businesses. These businesses are important sources of employment and economic growth but they face a major challenge of maintaining their competitiveness. Information technology has the potential to enhance the efficiency of these businesses. However, these SMBs often lack the ability to evaluate vendor proposals. They are price-sensitive, and risk-averse as far as IT is concerned. Burnt by past experiences, they are wary of making fresh investments in IT.

Under its iSMB initiative, iSPIRT plans to bridge the gap between domestic software product vendors who have relevant solutions and SMB customers. ISMB will study different verticals, map needs, and certify products meeting the vertical’s needs. Only product companies that have customer dispute resolution mechanisms in place will be accredited. Product companies will get feedback on where their solutions fall short of customer requirements. This initiative is designed to bridge the trust deficit that exists today between vendors and users.

ISMB will build on the positive experience of CIO Connect, an earlier effort to bring Indian product companies and large Indian corporate IT users together.

Both B.PAC and iSPIRT are Market-Makers

Though in theory markets provide the opportunity for sellers and buyers to come together, information asymmetry and high transaction costs can prevent markets from functioning efficiently. Initiatives like ISMB and CIO Connect help smoothen out these market imperfections.

B.PAC can also be seen as a market maker. A democratic system in which a whole chunk of voters does not participate will not reflect the needs of different interest groups accurately.

We tend to expect government to combat market failure. Both B.PAC and the ISMB initiative of iSPIRT represent voluntary, community efforts to do so. I will watch both these organizational initiatives with interest.

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New age platform. What it could be?

We have multiple definitions of platform, but in today’s world where reaching out to people is so easy and absolutely free, one can argue that in today’s context a platform is a vehicle to extend people’s voice beyond the ears closest to you. The channels that we use to have were very expensive – all required expertise, money or both whereas the new channels are over internet – mostly free. This is a fundamental change in the way culture is unfolding in our age. The cost of conversation is almost zero.  The time people spend is largely in creation of content, moving it through the channels, making a connect and building a relationship.

That the channels are free, doesn’t mean it’s without other costs. It requires time, creative efforts, lot of nurturing and applying yourself. It has a lot of human element involved to make it a success. It is about delivering information that’s useful to the people you hope to reach and to build relationships that lead to value. Do you have time and this skill? Does businesses has time and this skill? Do they even need it in-house? We will come back to it.

Hierarchy of needs theory by Maslow ranks human needs as physiological, safety, love & belonging, esteem and self-actualization. I believe that I can safely assume that people who are using the new channels are looking to satisfy needs at love & belonging and higher level. People in this group has emotional needs to have friends, intimacy, respect and to be valued. We have examples where people are ‘famous for being famous’ like Paris Hilton by effectively using the power of channel platforms. Even in India, people like Amitabh Bachchan and others are very active on social media.

It is obvious that business has a need for reaching out to people through the low cost channels (power of network) and on the other hand we have people having  esteem and self-actualization needs.  The new age platform will be the one that provide value for both businesses and people.

Education sector which is at $1,332B market size (source: NeXT Knowledge Factbook 2010), has been waiting for a major disruption for decades.  I am not talking about TV or a projector in a class room or a web interface for questions and presentation sharing here. I am talking about a major disruption in the way people learn; questioning the fundamentals of traditional ways of education where teachers are not just giving lectures (monolog), but supporting students individual needs.  A system which assist student to learn at her own pace, subjects of interest, allows to interact and collaborate with peer group, teachers, publishers and experts from across the globe. A preference based, self directed, collaborative personalized learning platform that helps in better organizing learning, flipped class room, group projects, expert guidance, mentoring and so on. A ecosystem of  students, teachers, publishers, mentors and parents working towards a common goal of education by leveraging new age education platform.

Interactive marketing a new way of marketing, riding on the availability of new digital communication channels is enjoying a double digit growth rate (source: Forrester Research) and is expected to grow even rapidly in the near and coming future. A flood of new tools have emerged and would continue to emerge to assist marketers with leveraging new emerging digital channel technology. These channels are mostly free, but the challenge is effectively using the various different channels available and also the enhanced focus on content creation, curation and interaction with customers and influencers. A new age platform which can bring people and business together on a common marketplace where business can market themselves through the current customers to attract potential customers and people share ideas, content to fulfill her higher needs.  A ecosystem of business, customers, freelancers and other business all working together to meet mutual aspirations.

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Lean way of sales

“Not meeting desired sales target?” is perhaps the most important question in any of senior management meetings.  But how do most companies react? Answer: “Re”setting the targets,“Re”structuring marketing campaigns and finally “Re”placing sales team (starting from executives ending up replacing sales director) and what will happen by doing several “Re’s” together…absolutely nothing. On the contrary such measures can damage team morale.

It is time to change, to replace traditional methodologies, to innovate and to spark. Time to analyse the mistakes.

Let’s rethink

What is a sale?  Act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation

Whats makes a sale?

  • Make the relevant presentation – Yes.. its necessary
  • Create connection between product/service and prospects. .. – Yes.. its necessary
  • Get to the point – Yes…its essential
  • Be animated … OK
  • Use showmanship… Ok ok
  • Use physical demonstration … Yes It’s necessary.
  • Believe on your product and Services… Aaahhhhhh….Its impossible….I have never seen it never utilized it ..how can i.. yes but I have capability to convenience customer though I haven’t  Utilized it …” True Salesmanship J”

And How much % this “making of a sale” will individually or contributed generate sales ?…Can’t Say. May be our sales guys are not proper… (In reality, sales guys are the most smartest guys in any of the organization).

It’s time for thinking…and changing. Let’s  make it the Lean Way…change “Re’s with Do’s

  • Do we are really addressing customer problems, completely?
  • Have we minimized cost of consumption (Price+ Time+Hassle)?
  • Do we provide exactly what customer wants?
  • Do we deliver value where customer wants?
  • Do we supply value where customer wants?

Remember, first sale to a customer could be important but it is the second sale that matters the most. Second sale will happen only if customer the is satisfied. Maximum value and minimized organizational waste is key to customer satisfaction. These are the only things that make a sale, make a customer buy, make it a competitive.

Guest Post Contributed by Meghshyam Gholap, Lean Sales Specialist

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Lessons on Pricing for Product Startups – Consumer and Enterprise!

Since the time Philip Kotler wrote his valuable tome on Marketing, technology has evolved so much that new pricing models like Freemium pricing are possible for both Consumer-oriented and Enterprise-oriented product startups. In addition, Free Trial pricing models and conversion to paid ones are common in both. In a price-conscious society like India, pricing can mean all the difference between a successful company and one that is not!

What have been some valuable lessons learned by companies in the recent past using all of these pricing models? If you were a product startup, what would be some of the pitfalls to watch out for?

Main lessons from using a Freemium Pricing Model for Consumer Internet Businesses

First, here are a few YouTube videos of Drew Houston presenting DropBox’s use of Freemium pricing with consumers, the lessons they have learned, and the pitfalls they encountered.

  • Use of SEO for lining up free users is very expensive
  • Affiliate Marketing is also expensive and does not work very well
  • Make sure that there are enough Paid Users that can support Free Users and you can still make money! Make sure that the Long Term Value (LTV) of Paid Users > Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) of all users. Otherwise, the more users you line up, the more you lose!
  • Build as many tools that help your free and paid users do viral and word of mouth marketing for you as you are building features!
  • Once you have given something for free, it is very difficult to take it back! But it can be done, as the videos show!

Drew Houston : Freemium for Consumer Internet Businesses, Part 1

Drew Houston: Freemium for Consumer Internet Businesses, Part 2

Drew Houston: Freemium for Consumer Internet Businesses, Part 3

Main lessons from using a Freemium Pricing Model for Enterrprise Businesses

First here are a couple of YouTube videos of Aaron Levie presenting Box.Net’s use of Freemium pricing with an enterprise product, the lessons they have learned, and the pitfalls they encountered. Their product is an enterprise collaborative portal that competes with Microsoft Sharepoint Portal but is hosted by Box.Net.

  • Tomorrow’s Enterprise decisions are made by today’s free users. So keep them happy! They are your marketers inside the company.
  • Sell enterprise freemium models to end users, not IT.
  • Unlike other models, Inside Sales will be taking calls from already existing free users – no need to prospect them. They come already qualified!
  • Conversion is key and is harder in enterprise freemium. This is purely because of the sheer larger numbers in the consumer space as compared to enterprises.
  • Understanding the difference between a “Free Trial” customer and a “Freemium” customer! Freemium customers stay on long after Free Trial customers are gone because their trial period ran out!

Aaron Levie: Freemium and the Enterprise, Part 1

Aaron Levie: Freemium and the Enterprise, Part 2

Dumb Pricing Mistakes

Here is an interesting video on dumb mistakes that people make in pricing, especially multiple tiers with different sets of features. And how to fix them!

Pricing Strategies: The dumb pricing mistake people make (and how to fix it)

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

 

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ProductNation is now Proudly Powered by iSPIRT.in

I am happy to inform you that ProductNation will now be part of iSPIRT – a think-tank focussed on transforming India into a hub for new generation software products, a thought which finally is seeing action. Welcome to the new look of the website where we have made it easier for our readers to find stories that interest them and share it with friends and professional colleagues. Do drop by and share your comments if you like the design or have any suggestions for improvement.

Let me tell you how this all started. For a long time, I have had this urge to make a substantial contribution to the product eco-system in India and I shared this in my previous blog. I am proud to say that in less than five months, we have been able to do 175+ blogs, got around 20+ blog contributors, and featured 40+ #MadeInIndia Product stories. With the support of few PNEvangelists, we have been able to do few #PNMeetups in the NCR region.

But ultimately it’s not about what we want to do but about what the product ecosystem expects. I think the real value comes when ProductNation is looked upon by this emerging industry as the most favored watering hole for good ideas and thoughts that will contribute to the growth of the industry.

It’s been an exciting journey and going forward we will be able to add value in a much more structured manner to the ecosystem. As I write this blog, I’m already working on few partnerships which will be able to give more visibility to the product start-ups from India.

So what does this alignment with iSPIRT mean?

The goal of ISPIRT is to help product entrepreneurs learn from each other and from experts so that they grow their companies faster. We also seek to encourage the right policy environment and the availability of public goods so that the industry can scale more rapidly.
In the first year, we aim to achieve the following:

  • Explain simply, cogently and persuasively to public intellectuals why a vibrant software product industry is vital to India’s future
  • Establish pn.ispirt.in as the open platform for deeper conversations within the industry
  • Spawn new community-led initiatives like iSMB and M&A Connect to address critical gaps.,

You can find more details at www.ispirt.in.

Finally, I’d like to thank my supporting partners (Sandhill, Yorke Communications, Iridium Interactive & Boring Brands) and the contributors for ProductNation who have actively stood by me in making ProductNation a destination for software products in an extremely short time.

I continue to seek your support in the journey ahead. Let’s all contribute and make a positive impact to the eco-system. Thank you.

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UX Lessons from Startups

UX

User Experience or UX dictates the connection strength of your product to your user. From a functional connect by how easily the user can accomplish a task, to an emotional connect which is a sum total of experience during and after using the product. It goes way beyond just the aesthetics or how the look (though it is an important part). Its really about how well do you fulfill the user’s expectations and objectives. Sometimes, unexpected delights become even more important to create a loyal base of customers. Therefore, a vision of any new product should include a user experience strategy at the onset. It probably becomes more important for startups, as they just have one or two shots at success.

As a User Experience (UX) design agency, we find it more challenging, yet a lot more fun working with startups. There is a larger canvas for creativity in middle of crazy timelines and ever-changing requirements.

We discuss some useful lessons from startups that have been more strategic, therefore more successful at achieving a stellar UX –

1. Appoint a UX champion – Ideally, a co-founder or a key member of the startup should be articulating and driving the UX. We worked with a startup trying to connect service providers to consumers, where one of the two co-founders succinctly put forth his design vision in the beginning of the engagement. Thereon, he was actively involved in all design reviews and took the final call on any design conflict. He never compromised on the UX during development, even when less preferable alternatives could have led to faster implementation. Sometimes a product manager trusted completely by the founders dons this role. She then becomes the seed of an internal design team.

2. Clear about building an internal team or hiring an agency – It seems the new IP battles are being fought over design. Apple vs Samsung legal tussle is more about design than about technology. So the desired degree of control over UX leads to the dilemma between building an internal team and hiring a specialized design agency. For startups where UX is central to the product, our experience suggests that it is difficult to find good talent within a short time frame, even if there is enough budget. Plus it takes time to build a culture conducive for inspired creativity. An outside agency can help detail out the UX vision, establish a user-centered mindset, and create initial patterns and templates that an internal team can evolve eventually. In essence, a good design partner can serve as the mold for a future internal design team. Sometimes due to security concerns, startups hire designers on short term contract to work onsite. It may work in a production capacity to buffer peak demands on internal teams, but not for creating great design.

3. Define an explicit design process within the larger development methodology – In startups, there is a lot of effort spent on adopting the right development methodology and platform. Design is not thought as a process, rather an input into the chosen development process. A good design process is iterative and involves people from multiple disciplines. Our sense is that if a high level design exists supported by solid user research then adopt a Lean UX approach to fit well within an Agile framework. Alternatively, when starting from a blank slate, allow for completion of high level design (using traditional Waterfall) before enforcing a development process. (More on pros and cons of each in a later post).

4. Attempt to measure the RoI from the UX decisions – Our mantra is to test early and test often. Any and all design decisions should always be supported by some, even incomplete, data. Conduct quick informal or hallway usability tests (measure ease of use) to validate designs early using low-fidelity or even paper prototypes. And then graduate to more formal tests with high-fidelity prototypes. Even post launch, A/B tests are common before releasing any major UI enhancement. Also, with inexpensive tools like Visual Website Optimizer, it is easy to calculate the impact of design decisions. In other words, it is difficult to replicate anything that is not measurable. There are now tools to measure the RoI of UX, a sphere that has been traditionally thought of as art than science. It is always a humbling experience seeing a user stumble on what we thought was good design.

In conclusion, we understand that that every startup or for that matter every company is unique and has different priorities. However, a compelling UX should be an integral part of your strategy.

(As a sidebar, Indian government has made it easy to file design patents within the New Designs Act, 2000. We will present some free UX toolkits and resources in our next blog post.)