In a tightly interweaved world of conversations, businesses receive feedback and criticism from every nook and corner. To reach another level to the fore, organizations are making giant strides in creating a seamless customer experience. In India, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is still at a nascent stage except for the Telecommunications and Banking Sectors. Its reach in the Indian market is mostly limited to the low-end account and contact management functions, and it is hard to see a single customer view across sales and service functions, which is selling like hotcakes in other parts of the world for instance. There is a significant gap in utilizing the CRM bouquet of solutions from business and IT stakeholders which arises from a lack of depth in knowledge. Given the maturity of the Indian CRM space, there is a lot of interest in moving to a Cloud solution. However, most Cloud solutions in the market do not have the necessary “vertical solutions” and are characterized with high costs of integration, which make them as expensive as “On Premise” solutions in the long run. Speridian Technologies, headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a strong presence in India, addresses these issues using the “Hosted on Premise” model, combining the deep vertical solutions of “On Premise” CRM Solutions, and at the same time providing the customers with a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) due to reduced dependencies on infrastructure management and IT resource needs.
Founded in 2003, Speridian has been working with large enterprise CRM implementations, specifically for healthcare, financial services and public sector organizations which were earlier known for high TCO and perceived lower ROI. CEO Girish Panicker started the company with a vision to bring world’s best custom software applications into a business, helping organizations gain greater perspective of their respective markets. It provides complete end to end CRM solutions to rationalize processes, to leverage resources better, and manage sales, service, finance, and marketing efforts with greater efficiency. This eventually boosts work productivity, cost control and customer experience to reach higher levels.
Innovating On a Strong Base
‘‘Taking the bull by the horns’’ is a general tendency when it comes to acclimatizing new trends in technology. Innovation comes from understanding the client’s changing business needs. New technologies are constantly evolving, but the question is whether the newer technologies have the right understanding of the business needs and have the necessary depth of functionality that the older, matured technologies have been providing for several years. The older technologies have been slow to react to changes but are catching up to remain updated by offering innovations such as Social CRM, Cloud-based Marketing, CTI Solutions and Web 2.0 UX,among others. Speridian has been quick to adopt innovations and endeavors to push the envelope, work harder, and come up with solutions that not only align to resolve the challenges faced by the client, but also create invaluable Intellectual Property (IP), which is a driving force for its own growth. “Mobilize”, a leading CRM Mobility platform well integrated with top CRM solutions, provides core vertical solutions by the industry, and is such a crystallization of Speridian’s domain expertise and experience in the CRM and Enterprise Mobility sectors.
“We pride ourselves in solving the toughest problems as we believe that it is much harder for the competition to replicate that success. We are well-tuned to the changes in the market and evolve accordingly, but not at the cost of a shaky foundation,” says Girish.
Carving a Niche
Speridian’s ability to build a lot of IP around CRM solutions over the years is a major key differentiator that sets it apart from competitors. Most players in the market follow the traditional approach that has been in existence for years without any modifications. Assessed at CMMI Level 5, Speridian provides holistic solutions that do not follow the traditional licensing and implementation models. The company also offers fully integrated, end-to-end solutions on a subscription model to end customers.
Recently listed for the third time in a row in Inc. 500’s list of the fastest growing private companies in America, Speridian’s comprehensive customer experience solutions bring clients a 360-degree view of each customer, facilitating regulatory compliance and increasing contact center efficiencies. Leveraging Speridian’s expertise in analysis, implementation, support, and quality assurance and testing services in the CRM space, customers have enhanced their customer service and market share globally. With offices in Washington, DC and Irvine, California in the US, Trivandrum and Bangalore in India, and Dubai, UAE, The Oracle Platinum Partner organization has built a multi-vertical portfolio of solution accelerators and reusable technology frameworks for the Healthcare, Life Sciences, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Financial Services industries, and the Public Sector.
The Way Further
In the midst of all the rapid challenges of a growing organization, Speridian is moving towards establishing core development practices that will result in a finer work environment and work-life balance for all employees. “CRM means different things to different people. In our opinion, it is a complete solution that marries sales, marketing and servicing functions under one umbrella across all channels – web, social, traditional call center, and retail,” adds Girish.
The future of CRM depends more on the context of the relationship with the customer as opposed to viewing it purely from a transactional point of view. This trend is continuing, driven by exciting integration initiatives with social media into CRM – also called Social CRM – with rapid gains in usability across desktops, tablets and smartphones, and with corresponding growth of the integration economy. Sky is the limit for this domain, and Speridian as a true innovator, strives to continue being a leader in the CRM hemisphere.
Copyright © 2014 CIO Review.
