Ankit Dudhwewala Archives

28/09/201628/09/2016

Customer Purchase Insights for Hotel Management Software

SoftwareSuggest is an online platform exclusively dedicated towards Business Software Discovery and Recommendation. We analyze every aspect of the software trends for the customers so that they can purchase the best software from hundreds of such products thronging the market. Since we value the satisfaction of our customers highly, we analyze their requirements with extensive research, and ultimately compile our observations and conclusions in the form of a report.

Here is an exhaustive Research Report on the “Customer Purchase Insights For Hotel Management Software”. The following are the conclusive findings of our Research Report.

Key Findings

– Most hotel management software buyers were from Maharashtra, followed by Delhi and Karnataka. With 8.5 percent, 7.5 percent and 7.3 percent software buyers respectively, these states tower over other states..

– Requirement for Installation-based software was more than Web-based software; the former crossing the mark with a whopping 64 percent.

– The Budget preferred by a majority of customers was in the range of INR 0-50,000, with around 65 percent of them belonging to the ‘First time User’ group.

– Around 40 percent of the customers prefer 3 demos before taking the purchase decision.

Let us have a detailed look at the figures as per our research results.

Geographic Spread Of Hotel Management Software Buyers

We found that 8.5 percent of hotel management software buyers were from Maharashtra, followed up by 7.5 percent in Delhi and 7.3 percent by Karnataka. Rest of the sections in the Graph is shared by other States.

Prefered Deployment Type: Installation-based Vs. Web-based Software

More Software buyers preferred installation-based software to web-based software. The former attributed to 64 percent of the total software buyers.

The Estimated Budget Preference (in INR) Of The Customers

Around 49 percent of customers preferred to buy their required software in the Budget range of INR 0-50,000. This is followed by 28 percent of customers, who preferred the the Budget range of INR 50,001- 1,00,000. The percentage of customers decreases gradually as the Budget range increases and this is clearly demonstrated in the Graph.

First time Software Buyers Against Existing Users Looking To Upgrade

It was observed that 65 percent of the users were first time software buyers and and 35% were looking to upgrade their existing software. For such buyers, the existing hotel management software was not quite up to the mark, and they wanted to try another software, with more functionalities and better quality standards.

Time Consumed By Customers Before Making A Purchase Decision

40% of customers usually take 2-3 months before finalizing which Hotel Management Software they want to purchase. Around 15% of the software buyers take the purchase decision in less than 1 month’s time. These are usually first time buyers with a new property.

Number Of Demos Taken by Customers Before Purchasing the Software

Around 40 percent of customers took 3 demos before opting to buy the paid version of Hotel Management Software. While 20 percent of users were satisfied with just 2 demos, around 30 percent used 4 demo sessions, before they were actually convinced to purchase this software.

Features Customers Look For In Hotel Management Software

As per our research, customers look for the below-mentioned features when it comes to buying a Hotel Management Software. Among these, Channel Management, Front Desk and Book Engine are the ‘must-have’ features in a Hotel Management Software.

All the above-mentioned facts and statistics have been generated from the data collected by SoftwareSuggest team.

We welcome your valuable thoughts or suggestions in the comment section below. You can find a list of Hotel Management Software here.

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08/04/201508/04/2015

Business Software Discovery made easier by SoftwareSuggest.com!

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

How did you hit upon the idea of SoftwareSuggest?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

05/06/201405/06/2014

Benefits of CRM Software – A 360° Evaluation

Do you own a business and face the problem of customer communication? Are you unaware of your customers’ needs? Are your customer’s unhappy with your services? Are you unable to analyze the progress of your business? Then, to all such problems there is one and only one solution – the CRM Software.

In any business two things are very critical: customers and employees. The growth of any business depends majorly on the relationship between the customers and the vendors. When both are satisfied then we have a “win-win” situation as happier customers are more loyal and spend often. To achieve this goal the business should meet its customers’ expectations and deliver them the best services in every odd. Hence, to address the problems of dealing with customers in day-to-day basis the concept of CRM was introduced which is gaining popularity from past few years.

Customer Relationship Management abbreviated as CRM is not just a software or an application of technology rather it’s a unique approach to deeply know the customers’ needs and nature in order to effectively and efficiently develop a stronger relationship with them.

CRM: Business Point Of View

Right Selection

The CRM application is a supreme tool that helps to easily manage the business of any type – big or small, anywhere- home or office ,anytime- day or night and hence, it boosts the customer services. The increase in the sales efficiency can be seen after implementing the right CRM. Even, a CRM can enhance the productivity by 30%, if used correctly. The selection of a right CRM for your business matters a lot to manage your business. Now-a-days, there are lots of CRM options available in the market.

Thus, as a businessman your first step is to figure out which option will help you build a strong relationship base with your customers and gain you profit.

Points to consider when evaluating a CRM are:
– Ease of implementation
– What features are available out of the box
– What level of customization is required to meet my business requirements
– Cost Professional Services
– Ease of integrating with other back office systems
– what level of integration is available “out of the box” to my telephony system.

Your Progress

The report system empowers you to analyze the progress of your business as well as your team.

Know your Financial Status

Certain CRM packages, offer its users to track their cost of sales and other operating costs to calculate the net profit. Such feature is implemented via finance software in the systems and plays a vital role in tracking the development of small business.

CRM: Sales Agent Point Of View

There are many ways in which CRM helps you to nurture the customer relationships with the sales agents and some of them are discussed below:

Organize your Business on tips

It is said that to achieve success easily you should have required resources. The same thing applies in the case of business too. The sale teams of any business – big or small can manage easily their business if they have the right tools to do the job.

The services offered by the CRM makes the task simple and effortless for the salesman or its team to efficiently organize their job of managing multiple clients or meeting big quotas.

Even you can track your own contacts, deals and leads using this technology and can share the info with your team members that helps to manage the customer’ needs even if their contact is not available on regular basis.

Alert System

This functionality of a CRM software follow-up the salesperson with the data set for alert and helps you to do various important tasks on time like to timely meet the milestones, trigger a new activity, prepare presentations, go through a communication with a customer and many more.

Setting alerts makes you attentive, proactive and impresses your multiple customers with your punctual working style.

Track the Important

CRM is a centralized system which helps you to manage your customer relationships by securely accessing as well as sharing your important information, correspondence, conversations, billing info or documents anywhere, anytime through your CRM based cloud benefits.

You can even have a look over the historical records of the customers which help you to deal with any specific customer more professionally.

Get Social

Most enterprise CRM systems help the agents to be in touch with their customers via social media. Moreover, with CRM, agents can work together through chat or video conferences. CRM software offer agents a space to create and store templates for call scripts that have restricted accessibility to other employees.

Even, the service agents can go live with their customers through their website and mobile apps.

Check where you stand

The reports attached with your CRM tool helps you to continuously measure your customer service performance as well as the customer activities so that you can easily figure out the needs of your clients and act accordingly to fulfill them.

CRM: Enhances Customer Services

After knowing deeply the benefits of CRM for different sectors let’s have a look on the ways in which CRM can help in improving Customer services.

Social media

Generally, social media is used to mainly watch the activities of the customers which help to better learn about the customer choice. Encouraging the clients to link their lead generation and social media enables the clients conveniently log-in. For example, instead of submitting their name, phone, email address, etc. on a form on your web site, let the users just sign in with LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Facebook and others.

Automated Customer Service

On adding a new customer to the CRM, automatically registering them in a Support System, sending them a “welcome to support” Email (with instructions on how to use it), adding them to the e-news mailing list, and notifying customer services to contact them after a specified period to see how they are getting on improves the customer services to a greater extent.

Easy Adoption to system

To make the customers efficiently use the CRM system new gamification processes can be included in a customized CRM.

Customer engagement

Customers always have a tendency to compare what they are getting is best or not it could be in terms of Price, Quality, Service and even the way there are being treated . So any function or process which can envisage the customers that they are getting the best deal or treatment from the market at optimal or lowest cost, and then nurturing that same relationship for highest profit or yield for as long as possible would make a difference to any Business.

Customer Self-Service Approach

Usually, CRM systems offer portals that manage knowledge for the customer self-service. These portals allow the customers to access FAQ or troubleshooting articles without assistance of any agent.

On the other hand, some CRM solutions also offer a company to establish their own online communities for their customers which is an easy way to reach for queries and feedback.

Thus, Customer Relationship Management is an efficient way to get a clearer picture of your current business and helps you to plan your future strategies to satisfy your customers.

So, what are you waiting for? Start expanding your business today with the suitable CRM technology and share your experiences with us via comments.

Browse a list of CRM Software at SoftwareSuggest.com