"Solution providers should add value to us and also to our customers"

After successfully targeting segments like BFSI and ITES for providing
customer interaction management (CIM) solutions, Talisma Corporation is now
looking at niche segments like healthcare. Delivering and deploying these CIM
solutions at the end-customer level, the company works with its set of nine
solution providers in India. But Girish Krishnamurthy is candid in stating that
Talisma will not go on adding more partners to its channel network, unless they
can deliver some value to the end-customer and the vendor as well.

What is Talisma's global marketing strategy for its
product offerings?

We have a strong channel-based approach towards selling our products. We
operate with the help of three different channels — direct, partner and
self-service (Internet-based).

Girish Krishnamurthy MD-APAC, Talisma Corporation

As most of our products involve a fair amount of integration
with other systems, we have a strong partner strategy to help us achieve our
goal. We have a strong focus towards geographies like North America and Europe
for the enterprise segment.  

How is the Indian market different from other geographies
where you have your presence?

The Indian market is quite active for us and we have some of the big
enterprises as our customers here. Segments like BFSI and the booming ITES
sector are very important to us. But the Indian market is pretty different when
it comes to our self-service channel that is primarily Internet-based.
Internet-based enterprise product sales are not happening in India.

Moving forward, we do expect this to be a good profiting area
for the company as there are some customers who are showing greater level of
confidence on the Internet-based models in India. Healthcare is another area,
which holds a lot of potential in India.

Some of Talisma's customers in India include AOL, Aviva,
Birla Sun Life, Canara Bank, Canon, Citibank, Cholamandalam AMC, Club Mahindra,
Daimler-Chrysler, Dell, DHL, Himalaya, ICICI Lombard, iGATE, Microsoft,
Prudential ICICI, Reliance Infocomm, Siemens, Sony and UTI Bank. Within India we
have 600 customers and around 640 worldwide.  

How does Talisma work with solution providers? What kind
of opportunities do your products offer to this community when it comes to
giving them a chance to move up the value chain?

At present, we have a small but very active solution provider community of
about nine partners in India. We work very closely with them when it comes to
providing our products to end-customers in this region.

Before deciding for such business critical partnerships, we
look for specific qualities in them. This is precisely the reason why we don't
have too many partners. We certainly look at the value that these partners are
going to add to our products and our end-customers value proposition as well. We
also look at the business match between these solution providers and us.

So having closely looked at these issues, we are sure to add
value to our partner's goals and objectives. As a result a partner moves up
the value chain much easily with the help of our products and offerings. 

With so many technological advancements happening at the
end-customer's access point level, how do you make sure that your product
offering is always cutting edge and the latest?

There are two things involved here. One is the business innovation and the
other is the technical innovation. We need to look at the research and
development and make sure that holistically, it is business driven. The right
kind of products should come out from the research so that the same can be sold
easily in the market. In order to achieve this task we always go back to our
customers for getting the feedback through regular interactions. These
interactions help us decide on the overall product roadmap and further enhancing
our business model as well.

Which verticals and geographies would you be focusing on
in the coming months? Are you looking at adding new partners to your network?

As far as geographies are concerned, we have a big focus towards the
European region now. We have just shortlisted around 30 partners that we would
be working with in the European region. Globally we work very closely with
around 75 partners. We are always open to adding new partners. This is an
evolving process for us.

But we do not add partners just for the sake of increasing
the numbers. As mentioned before, we always look at the overall value that a
partner is going to add to our products. At the same time we also look at the
value that this partner is delivering to our end customer.

ZIA ASKARI