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SMBs should leverage tech to drive efficiency: Denave CEO

Updated: Jun 17, 2016 07:13:46am
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SMBs should leverage tech to drive efficiency: Denave CEO

New Delhi (KNN) Reaching new customers and increasing sales are essential for the growth of any company. That is why companies are so particular about getting the right marketing strategy in place. Denave, a global consultant, has been advising it’s clients on formulation of sales promotion strategy for more than 17 years. It specifically helps firms increase their market shares by providing them access to new customers and earn better profits.

Snehashish Bhattacharjee, Global CEO & Co-Founder of Denave, who is also responsible for spearheading company’s strategic goals, speaks to KNN at length about his company’s strengths and benefits that potential customers, especially SMBs, can reap from them.

Excerpts
 

Q.  Tell us something about Denave.

Denave is a global sales enablement company focused on driving revenue growth for its customers through a gamut of service offerings. The company has built multi-industry expertise through partnership with businesses. It takes a solution-conscious last-mile approach to deliver best practices in sales by leveraging expertise, processes and technology to drive revenue. We have been providing sales enablement services for over 17 years now. We understand industry’s pulse and know what it takes to be profitable in the marketplace.

With workforce strength of over 5,000, a reach spanning 5 continents, 19 countries and more than 500 cities globally, Denave has traversed the evolution from an Indian to an Asian and now to a global company. Having serviced multiple industries across geographies, our practice teams have gathered the sales understanding and domain knowledge like no one else. Our success is because of our ability to bridge the gap between strategy and execution, based on our evolved processes and systems.

 

Q.  Looking at today’s competitive industry, how can you help companies – big or small, to create a niche space for themselves in the market?

Enterprises are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of adopting processes that will fill the gaps in their sales operations. As a strategic approach, enterprises today employ sales enablement as a key driver. With our sales enablement services, we provide competitive edge to our customers by:

  • Focusing on revenue maximization and incremental market share
  • Providing an enhanced customer experience by creating an effective sales ecosystem and driving partner readiness engines
  • Providing quicker realization on ROI, therefore driving profitability
  • Increasing the size of the pie by providing access to untapped potential customer database

90% sales strategies fail due to bad implementation or gaps in understanding of the plan. An accurate strategy needs a perfect execution for it to really qualify as a success story, which is where the sales process understanding fits in.

 

Q.  What are the Industry Verticals where you operate?

We are strongly present in the IT, ITES, Telecom, FMCG, Consumer Electronics verticals. We are focusing on the FMCG vertical aggressively for our future growth. However, any company that requires an effective sales strategy implementation and has the need to drive incremental revenues, sales enablement solutions become relevant for them

 

Q.  What kind of services does Denave provide to industry giants?

At Denave, we create processes for establishing selling practices through the entire value chain which drive incremental and optimal returns for organizations. Our winning strategy, therefore, rests in innovative sales enablement technology, which can be used to establish best practices, help businesses better understand their customers, provide insight into buyer needs and behaviours, and improve sales effectiveness

With competencies such as Cloud Penetration, Geo-expansion, Mobility Adoption and SMB Penetration, we cater tailor-made solutions to companies across the industries globally.  Our services are broadly categorized under 5 pillars, all driving the company’s sales objectives and impacting the revenue for greater profitability

Demand generation: Our expertise lies in devising sales strategies that lead to increased awareness, remove complexities and drive incremental revenue for our customers. This, of course, can be driven through on-ground or tele-led or even hybrid models

Channel development: Today, companies are placing a greater emphasis on ‘go to market’ plans. These are driven by sales strategies that rely on channel partners who become the face of the brand. At Denave, we understand the strategic implication of this and can support this with extensive multi-industry experience to cross-pollinate best practices. For us, optimising the channel is a focus point of sales execution

Retail management: Our Retail practice team takes a solution-conscious approach to ensure sales readiness thereby promoting brand advocacy, achieve sell-out targets and impact market in long term share. Having established our foothold in the IT and Telecom industry, we are now aggressively focusing on the FMCG industry with our retail services

Technology: State-of-the-art technology underpins every sales solution that we deliver. Our experience has shown us that an automated sales process can significantly impact product life cycle and ROI on sales strategies. Our fundamental goal is to improve sales effectiveness via technology enablers for the decision makers to overcome challenges and achieve desired results

Learning: Successful execution of sales strategies demands that teams and people are well trained and supported for customer engagement at all phases of the customer lifecycle. Denave’s Training division provides solutions for sales readiness and customer management for a variety of assignments - from large-scale classroom training and roll-out; on-the-job specialised learning, to remote on-the-job support

 

Q.  Cloud selling is said to be a different ball game in the sales ecosystem. Can you share more insights on this?

Cloud, the technology that redefined the IT landscape a few years ago, is an attractive value proposition for most businesses today. As the world moves from conventional products to cloud-based products and services, the selling methodology needs to evolve proportionately. The buyer sensitivities involved are very different and therefore the selling technique needs to be that much more consultative in nature. As the world’s focus moves towards optimization and shared services, the cloud market will continue to gain acceptance and become a key business enabler.

For selling the cloud, it is about improving the ecosystem preparedness. In the cloud ecosystem, the buyer’s awareness is much more evolved and therefore it is imperative to identify partners who are progressive and ready to adopt a consultative approach with customers. Readiness programs including communication engine, readiness engine and engagement engine is of prime importance here.

Customer experience is of prime importance in this era, even in the post-sales stage since consumption will drive continuity. The sales conversation therefore will need to be more experience-based, than pure pitch-based. The knowledge and experience in driving consumption in this market is an absolute key in order to target incremental and consistently growing revenues. If you are an organisation that’s focusing on selling and driving cloud consumption, you need to absolutely partner with experts who can become your extended sales force to increase awareness, drive readiness in the ecosystem to help faster adoption, drive activation, grow usage and finally drive consumption.

 

Q.  How are you addressing the booming start-up ecosystem through your services?

For the booming startup ecosystem, we provide services that focus on customer acquisition, partner/ retailer acquisition and driving service adoption. All these are addressed through our telesales offerings or marketing activations or even a hybrid model in many cases.

 

Q.  How can SMBs increase their sales and profits by making use of latest technology (Computer Hardware and Software)?

There are multiple technology support systems that an SMB can leverage to improve on their sales outcome. They can leverage new-age B2B e-commerce platforms that help drive efficiencies and focus on aggregation of SMB purchase requirements to drive economies of scale. Optimising sales team efficiency leveraging salesforce automation platforms for real-time information and faster and effective decision-making can also be looked upon. Additionally, SMBs can leverage Digital marketing platforms to drive effective lead generation campaigns and reduce cost of customer prospecting.

 

Q.  What inhibits SMBs from using latest technology?

The perception of high cost and complexity of usage are the primary deterrents here. However, technology is meant to remove complexities from the system, enable better collaboration, and facilitate real-time decision making.  The advent of cloud-based solutions has made technology affordable and is a great starting point for an SMB exploring technology leverage to drive sales effectiveness.

 

Q.  IT majors like HP are big enablers for efficiency. What advice would you give SMBs on adoption of technology?

Technology should be used as a means to drive efficiency. In case the team size is not very big, technology adoption can be deferred. However, as the team size goes above the 25 people mark, technology adoption can help to improve sales efficiency, operations optimization and lower redundancy.

 

Q.  How can the needs of the booming start-up ecosystem be addressed using technology or IT hardwares?    

Mobility adoption allowing faster customer reach for new age start-ups – app based offerings

  • Cloud solutions providing quick access to customer history, customer reach and reduced capex cost
  • Social media – a great marketing tool at half the cost of traditional ATL/BTL spends
  • E-commerce gateways making direct customer billing a reality and thereby reducing cost of customer transaction.

 

Q.  Companies like HP has major focus towards SME segment and they innovate a great deal to meet the varied demands of the sector, do you think adapting to the newer better technologies provided by these companies up the efficiencies and also economies?

The new technologies created by these companies are created keeping the dynamics of the SME requirements in mind – with respect to what they need, what they can support and what impact they desire. Therefore, these new-age technologies result in better efficiencies, optimization, data security and lower total cost of ownership. Developments in devices, printer technology, networking solutions, cloud solutions etc. have all been aimed at providing better output and economies of scale for SMEs. SMEs world over are benefitting from these developments.​

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