Episode 3: Enhancing Marketing and Service functions with Robust CRM Infrastructure

Vishal: Welcome back everyone to session 3 of our podcast. We have broken this into parts so that we hope to seek your attention. I am Vishal Reddy and this is Paddy sitting beside me.

Last session we spoke about sales and operations and in this session, we want to cover two other important factors of a business function more importantly rather than just a platform company function which is marketing and service so Paddy you know we spoke about how sales and operations go hand in hand in a stronger way for a platform company. PE owned platform company yeah how do you see that in the whole marketing and services as a function uh so how do you see that in the whole marketing and service as two separate functions in a typical, any public or private company?

How do you see them being strongly tied together? 

Paddy: Yeah, sure. I mean, right at the top, marketing, and service really go together everywhere and everywhere. Your service is your brand. What you deliver is what you do is what you stand for.

Vishal: It’s walk the talk. 

Paddy: Exactly. You’re walking the talk. So regardless of your business, what form of business you are, whether you’re a PE business or a private company, or a simple partnership, what you do is what you are. So there’s no game saying that right but if you look at specifically PE businesses right this equation this closed loop of this thing takes on a bit more seriousness a bit more power that is to it a bit more of a mandate to it what do you mean by that. As I said, PE business is all about opportunities, specific opportunities that are identified at the PC’s, right? So what you see often in PE businesses is that they value every data, every information, every intelligence that the company business has, right, of its customers right so every service, every delivery the information that is generated right so the PE business invests in enriching that information the production of that generation of information and maintaining the information maintenance the intelligence right the service intelligence right and I don’t mean the service request part how the customer is using the product, right? And what are they doing with that, right? So that they can use that to sell more, to cross-sell more, to up-sell more, right?

So a PE business is a very serious business. They value every bit. Everything is an asset for a PE business. A small piece of data about how a particular product in a particular region if it is constantly failing right that’s useful data in a large business they might say it’s just happening random they might call that as a random occurrence but no a PE business wants to be intelligent to every event happening you know with their staff with their customers right so the value data intelligence information more that’s the first thing so when you do when you see that happening so what you see on the ground in a PE business is that the walls between service departments and marketing departments also get may not be blurry but yeah there are a lot more collaborative highly deeply collaborative right on the data that they generate right so this is very very common in PE businesses so it is not simply a marketing department that independently generates leads and runs its campaign and so on it’s it’s very much deeply invested in the kind of product and production and usages uh customers are doing uh of the company’s product and they tie back the marketing to that as deeply as possible of course these things these are none of this is new these are pretty natural ways. And for eons, all businesses have been doing that. What is probably a bit different today is that today we have tools. One, is the capability. Again, the thoughts themselves are not new. This is quite common. Everybody, for eons, people have been doing this. They may not have had the necessary support in their companies in the businesses to actually implement them because silos are silos departments take on a life of their own and they tend to move away from each other they live in their own silos so from a management perspective while things were all known understood the actual execution may not have been as good and rich as one would have liked in the decades past, in the centuries past. So what is different today is that some of those artificial or tough barriers have broken down. Technology has played a big role in that. So today you have tools for marketing and even service, right? Tools to capture data, to know what’s going on with the customer, right? So a whole lot of technical capabilities exist today.

So serious businesses can invest in them to get those data generate those things use that intelligence information to make the right decisions right that technology is available today right in a slightly more easier fashion and manageable fashion at a slightly lower cheaper cost fashion to all those matters eventually that’s in that’s the difference today right and shows me businesses being who they are a PE business is maniacal about the opportunity.

They want to solve a problem, right? They will not leave any stone unturned if it is relevant to the problem and the opportunity they’re going after, right? So they are the big consumers of technology in general. So in these technologies, you’ll find them in greater use, I would say, in PE businesses versus regular businesses. 

Vishal: Sure, yeah, very interesting. I would say, in PE businesses versus a regular job. Sure. Yeah, very interesting. And the whole concept of analyzing every small bit of data is a whole topic by itself.

Decision-making using data is super important, and it’s becoming increasingly popular in today’s age. I wouldn’t say popular is a necessity, so we’ll talk more about that in the next session.

But coming back to the whole CRM and our services and how we can, or I would say first, we’ll talk about how CRM can probably play, how CRM can play an effective role in helping PortCo’s or platform companies service their customers better.

Paddy: I mean, the short answer to that is that we’ve been hearing this for 20 years now, it’s big data, right? Truly usable, intelligible, useful information comes from a good scale of data, right? You need to find patterns, right? So at a minimum, you’re dealing with large volumes of data. You need to build the capability to generate them, to capture them, to acquire the data, and then of course process them, and then glean the intelligence out of these, and then make them actionable for your sake, marketing campaigns, and so on, demand generation activities. So this is not easy. We can probably speak of it in a very smooth fashion, but that’s because we’re not talking about it actually executing doing these things is quite a bit of hard work at the technology level too right so again going back there are not too many we have a lot of pinpoint solutions point solutions but really what we’re talking about here Vishal is that you need platform systems which can actually at least help you achieve some of these, do these tasks a bit more easily, right? Quickly, maybe at a lower cost, and so on, right? It should not demand high skills, which is like I said before, these things are not new thoughts. 

The technologies are not there, right? So whatever new technology we have today must again, not simply, you know, make them harder, you know, the technology must do a bit of heavy lifting right it must make things easier for the business to actually utilize and use it right so uh so yes there are platform uh products available in the technology market today to which make which really do a humongous job of these things a lot of automation very well modeled data model enterprise models are relevant uh and when it comes to data the interfaces and so on so there are a good number of handful of products in the market available which really do a great job of these things they’re actually valuable to the business right and a PE business which utilizes them will actually see serious returns by utilizing them to the hilt so to say but yeah we should also be put a word of caution there it is not that there are too many of them right uh so cost can be a factor in some cases uh and in other cases one one might make a mistake of you know uh buying the wrong product you know because you know one right you do a good assessment and so on so yeah those risks do exist because as anything in the IT industry, there’s always many very many things for every everything right so it’s very easy to do a misbuying and a mis-selling in our

industry right so that that is all the more the case in the marketing and service loop as you call it but there are some great products which really do a fantastic job and yeah and a serious business certainly go after and buy and license those products and use them really well and then great products which really do a fantastic job and a serious business will certainly go after and buy and license those products and use them really well. And then as before, you need the right partners to work with them, implement them, and maintain them. The same old story with IT.

IT is really about partners, really, right? The product is just the starting point. The product is the tip of the iceberg. The whole world beneath that supports it. So it’s all the more important in this marketing and service cycle.

There are a lot of opportunities there in today’s world where everything is electronified, digitized, digitalized, and both. But yeah, these are nice to speak about and then hope for when there are good products which can also do them, but yeah, it also requires smart decisions on buying the right stuff and actually executing them. So, there is a good availability, one needs to execute on them today. 

Vishal: Sure, sure, fair. As a company ourselves and likewise other service providers, what in your opinion do you think that they can do better to or you know something that we have done better as an organization to support the servicing the services that some of the platform companies provide to their customers better or enhance them.

Paddy: Sure I mean at the very top if a PE business is already, I mean, we’re talking about PE business here today, right? If a PE business is already, already has this vision that this

is what they want to do, and then they’re just looking out for the right people and tools to help them, right? That’s the first case, right? Because you have the other case also, also viable, and also a valid case, where the PE business has a very rough idea on what they want to achieve, but they’re still early into even knowing what the market looks like. I mean, the technology market is what I’m talking about. So they need more advice on how to go about it as well.

They want to do it, but they may not have the in-house capabilities and the decision-making abilities to even choose these things and get going quickly so you have both these things right in a typical normal thing right so the first case where it’s pretty well understood uh it’s only about doing the play properly right uh so there uh one the partner needs to have strong capabilities in data acquisition data data definition, right? And moving quickly again, right?

Digitizing, converting things that are on paper perhaps or in different formats. They’re in different sources, data sources are in different formats, right? Pulling them together. So really data management as a profession, as an industrial profession would be a strong point in that case, right? And then of course the actual marketing and service functionalities. Remember, these are core fundamental capabilities. You’re trying to glean, and discern intelligence from what is happening in your customer base, and converting them into your marketing language, to use them for marketing. 

There are a lot of privacy issues involved of data security first into security rights and then privacy privacy goes for a toss you know it becomes complicated when I’m trying to bridge one extreme your service consumption side with your demand inside right it’s a huge problem you need not just tools and people who appreciate these things actually executing on privacy Vishal is very hard very tough there’s a lot of work to be done it can be done nothing is impossible it’s a lot of work you miss a few things and you know you could be having it on your face right that’s the thing so you need capabilities of those kinds and platforms which can help you and support those processes. On the other category we spoke about, where it’s more of advisory, the PE business has a rough idea of how these things are very useful for their business, but they really have to get started on it, but there is more advisory. So your partner also needs to not just be an advisor but also needs to execute for you. It’s a bit more, a much more longer, longer, wider portfolio for your partner.

But again, the topics are the same. You know, you need to respect the privacy of data, and how to generate tooling to generate data. It might go back into engineering the product itself. So it’s a lot more harder work, longer work to build the capability, the telemetry into

your product, and so on, exploit public databases. So it’s a lot harder work, but more work I would say. So you need partners who can understand these things and hopefully be a one-stop shop as much as possible because it keeps things speedier if you have one stop versus multiple stops. If you have one platform versus multiple platforms, things are much easier, and speedier. So yeah, those are the capabilities.

Vishal: Yeah, and I can speak on behalf of our services and all that. We have been involved in both instances, right, where there have been engagements where PE companies,

the PlatCo’s are well aware of what technology they want to use, or what is it that helps them in, you know, to service their customers better, or which in turn converts into new leads and marketing and revenue and whatnot, versus there are companies that come to you that are kind of clueless, and they really need some directional help. It’s not that they do not want to invest, but it’s the idea and it’s the whole knowledge behind making the right investment, as you said, instead of going to the wrong track and losing time, which is the most important factor in this business. So, sure, yeah, interesting conversation.

And the whole, I would say the summary of this would be probably marketing and service running around in the same, in a loop where you’re servicing your customers you’re getting the brand and you’re looking back at your internal marketing to use the leads to use the data to generate leads and new business this goes in a loop in the PE world that’s true sure all right and uh yeah thank you everyone for listening uh moving you know next session we’ll be talking about the future and economics of the PE world and how some of we’ll talk more about CRMIT’s unique services which are highly targeted towards the platform companies. Thank you.