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Cover Story
“CRM witnessed growth despite the slowdown”
Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, Senior Research Manager-Emerging
software, Springboard Research said that the economic slowdown actually contributed
to the growth of CRM as companies become familiar with its business benefits
By Rajendra Chaudhary
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 "Both
the on-premise and on-demand market will continue to grow independently.
But on-demand will appeal more and grow faster because of low upfront
cost and ease of maintenance"
- Balaka Baruah Aggarwal
Senior Research Manager-Emerging software,
Springboard Research
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Can you summarize the business growth that you have seen
in the CRM market in 2009?
Contrary to the common notion that the overall (EAS) markets tanked, the CRM
market in India experienced steady growth in 2009 as companies here continued
to invest in technologies to streamline their operations and save money. Additionally,
instead of focusing on expansion plans, Indian companies focused on how to retain
existing customers and consolidate their hold in the market during challenging
times.
Demand from verticals such as telecom, hospitals, tourism,
education and consumer goods remained unabated. There is increased interest
in the government sector for CRM deployment propelled by recent regulations
for timely and efficient citizen services (referred to as RTI).
Do you believe that on-demand CRM systems will grow at
the cost of the on-premise model?
Both the on-premise and on-demand market will continue to grow as each model
has its inherent values. However the on-demand model will experience a much
higher rate of growth because of its small base, lower upfront cost, ease of
use and maintenance, and the increasing reliability of the Internet as a medium
of doing business.
Traditional software applications are slowly beginning to yield ground to SaaS
applications—32% of SaaS adopters that we surveyed are going to replace
on-premise applications. An even larger percentage (41%) of respondents had
evaluated an on-premise application before deciding to subscribe to SaaS. The
growing appeal of SaaS is also evident from the fact that 22% those who were
already using an on-premise application have later chosen to adopt the SaaS
version of the application in another geography or department of the organization.
What are the basic issues customers are trying to solve
using CRM?
CRM is being deployed to help companies streamline internal
operations, optimize costs, organize information about their customers and leverage
that information to expand business offerings.
CRM is a strategy and it needs to be aligned with internal business processes
for successful implementation. With CRM deployments, companies have better control
of their business processes that reduces their operational costs. At the same
time, companies have been able to better leverage information about their customers
to offer new services and offerings based on customer behavior and history.
Going forward do you see the positive momentum to continue
in 2010?
We believe that the momentum in the CRM market will continue as the economy
expands to secondary towns and cities and customers become more demanding.
The intensely competitive market conditions will require companies to adopt
CRM tools to manage growth and stay ahead in the game. n
rajendra.c@expressindia.com
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