By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is a Steve Miller Band classic run – Sailor,
Brave New World and The Best of 1968-1973:
Today we’re happy to have Dan Vetras, the CEO of Talisma taking time out of
his schedule to answer some question First Coffee had:
FC: Hi Dan, thanks for
your time. Talisma is now working in the Customer Interaction Management
space, how does that jibe with CRM systems?
DV: CIM unifies all of the “point” products critical for
communicating with customers today, including e-mail, chat, Web self service,
collaboration, and, soon, VoIP – through a common set of knowledge, monitoring,
and reporting tools to optimize current and future interactions. CIM products also
tap into relevant information across other businesses products such as CRM
systems so that agents can access appropriate information for faster, more
accurate inquiry resolutions.
By working in tandem with CRM and back office systems,
companies benefit by enabling easy access to the critical data in those systems
needed to efficiently and effectively resolve the current customer interaction
at hand.
FC: What was the
thinking behind Talisma basically changing direction, and focusing on Customer
Interaction Management?
Businesses need help managing the overwhelming amount of customer
interactions they deal with on a regular basis as a result of the new forms of
Internet-based communications. Businesses today need help delivering effective
customer support in the customer’s preferred channel of communication. They also
need help with cross-channel quality monitoring and measurement.
Consider a key market driver such as Internet usage. Who
doesn’t use the Internet? Since the advent of the ‘Net, adoption rates have
increased every year and are still rising with projections of 15 percent over
the next five years. Because all of our communications are becoming more
Internet-centric, businesses must be able to deliver customer service and sales
support in ways that are relevant to the customer.
In a nutshell, as the total number of Internet
communications are on the rise, e-mail, chat, Web self service, VoIP, and other
technologies are already the de facto choices for many customers and their
chosen channel of interaction. Companies don’t really have a choice anymore and
must offer these channel choices if they don’t already. By integrating these
channels with a CIM product, business will benefit from a universal view of the
customers, access to third party information, and a holistic view of all
interactions to optimize operations and efficiencies.
Through corporate acquisitions and the company’s product
development roadmap, Talisma has been offering multi-channel CRM products to
industry leading companies for many years. Today, we’re using our strengths and
hoping to capitalize on a huge market that is forecasted to reach to $2.6
billion in 2008 from $1.2 billion today, according to Datamonitor, by
integrating our multi-channel CRM point products and taking customer
interaction management to the next level with the right set of monitoring and
reporting tools.
FC: How does CIM
respond to market needs today?
DV: Today, people prefer to use Internet-centric means of
communications and CIM enables businesses to offer relevant Internet-based
communication through multiple channels that are seamlessly integrated for more
effective and efficient interactions. Companies don’t have the luxury of choice
and need to offer multi-channels communication choices such as e-mail, chat and
Web self service. These and other Internet-centric technology are on the rise
and businesses that integrate these offerings and tie them into existing data
will benefit by delivering a seamless customer experience that will exceed
customer expectations.
FC: Why should
companies implement CIM strategies? What are some examples of the benefits
of CIM?
DV: Many companies, especially large enterprises, have CRM
systems in place and are ready to embrace a more customer centric strategy by
focusing on the customer interaction at hand not heavy data bases. CIM brings all of the relevant information
that can help resolve an inquiry more efficiently and effectively into a single
view.
By deploying a CIM strategy, agents have easy access to this
relevant information and customers have easy access to the communication channel
of their choice. CIM provides the
relevant information required to address the customer issue, at the right
time. These combined elements will
result in a positive customer experience each and every time.
End-users today have become channel agnostic, a term which
indicates how a customer might “channel
surf.” For example, a customer might communicate with a company via chat one
day and the next day use the company’s web site for customer self service. And,
the following week, the same customer
might revisit the web site and send an e-mail to customer service. People do
not choose the same communication channel all of the time and, as a result, all
channels must be integrated and all must be leveraging the same source of
knowledge to deliver a seamless customer experience across the board.
There are many benefits of CIM including faster, more
accurate inquiry resolution; more effective customer dialogues; access to
assistance through the most appropriate and preferred interaction channels;
seamless escalation across channels; and customer centric proactive features.
FC: What are your
plans for Talisma’s CRM offering and how do they diverge from the CIM
products?
DV: The latest version of Talisma CRM, version 7.0, is
shipping November 2005 and many of its features are particularly advantageous
for the Higher Education community, which is the target vertical for the
product going forward.
FC: Talisma has operations
around the world, but what type of work comes out of your Bangalore
operations?
DV: What started in Bangalore in 1999 as an e-mail
management company has grown to a truly global business. Talisma has a team of
250 located all over the world in North American, Europe, and Asia. Bangalore
is home to many Talisma employees whose job functions vary from software
developers and engineers to sales, service, and marketing.
FC: What’s the best
music to listen to while working?
DV: I sometimes keep the radio in my office on, which is
tuned 103.7, “The Mountain” (KMTT-FM). It plays a good mix of popular and
classic rock by musicians as varied as Robert Cray, Marc Cohn, Coldplay,
Clapton, Sheryl Crow, etc.
FC: As well as some
artists whose names don’t begin with “C.” Why does Talisma see India as such a
key market?
DV: India is the land of emerging opportunity. Today, the
Indian economy is growing at 7-8% annually and IT spending is growing 25-30%
annually. Both of these growth rates are among the fastest in the world. Furthermore,
Indian companies have always been very customer service oriented, so there is a
natural fit for our product. India is a world leader in the Business Process
Outsourcing market and call center industries. Not only are these sectors
growing faster than 30 percent but Talisma has a clear value proposition for
these industries that go hand in hand with CIM software.
In addition, many countries in the South East Asia region
look to India to provide technology leadership, so establishing a strong base
in India is vital to doing well in the whole of South East Asia. Additionally,
working with large global concerns in this market has provided the company with
an excellent foothold into other operations of said company throughout the
world.
Talisma’s focus on the Indian market has proved strategic
and our success in the area is evidenced by revenue growth which has been more
than 120% Year-on-Year in FY05.
The numbers are strong because in several CIM and CRM
categories, Talisma is the undisputed market leader in India. For example,
Talisma recently received the Frost & Sullivan award for market leadership
in E-mail Response Management systems, owning just more than half of the total
market.
Unique to most software providers operating in India,
Talisma is one of the few success stories among software products that
originated in India, a country known for software services. For this reason,
and for the fact that Talisma has been in the Indian market since 1999, Talisma
has tremendous brand equity in corporate India.
FC: What does “Talisma”
mean?
DV: Talisma is derived from “talisman,” which is a charm
that can produce magical or miraculous effects. It also can help ward off evil
spirits. It’s also fun to say.
FC: What kind of
future do you see for the on-demand model in CIM?
DV: No doubt about it: On-demand software is here to stay. Talisma
views it as a mean to an end – not the end in and of itself. It’s not about the method of delivery but
about the application – its functionality and ease of use so that end user will
embrace it.
Talisma will continue to offer software both for onsite
deployments and on-demand instances in order to meet the needs of all our
customers. The key is to make on-demand software secure, scalable, and interoperable
with other products. If it can’t function at the level an enterprise-class
customer would expect it to, why should a small business have to use it?
Some of the market leaders providing on demand software are having
trouble with this scalability and interoperability and we’re picking up a lot
of business from the companies who need these features.
We have found that scalable, on-demand software is a great
way for customers to try our products, without making much of a capital or
resource investment. Once it proves itself, larger enterprises often decide
that owning it makes more sense from an economical and customization
standpoint.
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