Saigun Technologies’ EmpXtrack is among the most comprehensive HR software solutions available in the market today. In a freewheeling discussion with the Confluence Editorial Team, Tushar Bhatia, President of Saigun, discusses the journey so far and the road ahead. Tushar talks about how his team stayed in touch with the market, decided on a ‘go-to-market’ strategy, and won their first set of customers.How it all began
Saigun Technologies was started, in 2002, as a company that would offer Offshore Software Development and Maintenance Services to clients in the US. The timing and market situation (post 9/11) led me to wait for the first project to come in although I had hired a good sized team.
The birth of EmpXtrack
While waiting and doing small projects, we came up with the idea of developing a performance management system that could help big companies automate their performance appraisal process. What started as on online-appraisal system has now grown into a comprehensive offering for the HR departments and is called EmpXtrack.
Because of the existing domain expertise of our management team, selecting the HR space was an easy decision. We could identify the need for an Integrated HR solution very early in our Product Development Lifecycle and could mature the product fairly rapidly.
In addition, one of our longstanding clients is a large US based company, in the HR space. We have developed and implemented multiple product lines for them since 2003, and all these products are SaaS offerings. This product development and implementation experience helped us refine our skills for developing and supporting EmpXtrack on the SaaS platform.
"This product development and implementation experience helped us refine our skills for developing and supporting EmpXtrack on the SaaS platform."
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Deciding on the go-to-market strategy
It has been a hit-and-trial operation.
Initially, our focus market was big companies where we felt we could help automate specific HR processes. In the market, however, we discovered that most big companies had already adopted large ERP systems. While being under-served (vis-à-vis HR), they were rather uncomfortable with changes in their processes and were also apprehensive about working with us.
Next, we tried SMEs where we had some good successes, and won many customers in the space. We had two important insights while serving this segment – both in technology and selling. On the technology side, we discovered that the SME market did not even have basic HR systems in place and required a complete product that covered all aspects of HR under one roof.
On the selling front, we found that the SME market did not need as many touch points as enterprise selling. Hence, our focus shifted to web-based marketing and selling.
After acquiring about 30 customers in India, we forayed into the US. We are confident that the market exists; recently, we hired a local sales person in Chicago and are planning to gradually add more people in different geographies in the US.
The go-to-market strategy has evolved from relationship and reference-based selling to aggressively marketing ourselves on web-based channels such as Google.
“On the selling front, we found that the SME market did not need as many touch points as enterprise selling. Hence, our focus shifted to web-based marketing and selling. ”
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View on competition
The HR software products industry, fortunately for us, is very fragmented with lots of providers in niche areas. We were amongst the first few companies to offer an integrated solution which covers the entire gamut of HR activities. Incidentally, this is our value proposition too.
Moreover, the market is evolving with a huge opportunity for growth across the world. Some estimate this to be a $600 billion market by 2015, and we are looking for a sizeable chunk of that. Having said this, the biggest challenge is adapting the solution to the regulatory needs and HR processes of all our target markets as well as building a solution for a global enterprise.
And the role of marketing
Extremely important, and a challenge. Without customers it is difficult to build a brand and, paradoxically, customers don't come till you have a brand. So, we did what all start-up companies do; beg for orders, accommodate difficult customers, provide an extremely high level of service while persisting with the online marketing activities. The culmination of this was when a recent customer said that she found out how big we were when she saw over 25,000 pages on us on the Yahoo! search and placed an order just because of that.
We have been constantly writing on Web forums and portals, attending and sponsoring events, using channels such as NASSCOM, TiE, NHRDN, LinkedIn, SHRM, HR Technology Conference for Networking. We have also built a formidable team of advisors who have been constantly guiding us.
On successfully enroling the first set of customers
We introduced a shrink-wrapped, completely packaged solution for SMEs called EmpXtrack-Lite. The product concept had significant inputs from Prayag Consulting as well. Last year, we have had large market acceptability of the product both in India and overseas.
With a much higher understanding of the market and customer needs, we are now ready to introduce more packaged products and are starting a completely new marketing campaign.
What the future holds
With the baby boomer generation retiring, there is a massive talent shortage in the Western countries. Organizations will have to optimize their workforce to deliver at the lowest possible manpower requirements, and any solution that can help them do this effectively will be a sure winner.
The maturing of Internet based technology platforms, acceptance of the SaaS concept by the market at large, good security standards and low cost of bandwidth are further enablers. We are fortunately in a good period at the right time and hope to capitalize on the trend.
Looking at the opportunity size and receptivity of our offerings, we may (hopefully) be very busy for many more years.
Market perspective
I feel that the On Demand offering has a quicker commoditization cycle which will naturally happen in the case of HR products as well. While the US and European markets are fairly mature in terms of what they want, (leading to quicker stabilization and commodity based products which may happen in the next 2 – 3 years), India, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, China and other emerging markets have a long way to go. So, there will be many opportunities for services paired with product selling even in the future.
Pleasures and pains of being an entrepreneur
People make the organization and each organization acquires a unique DNA. To begin with, it was difficult to identify our DNA. Now, as we are growing, the difficulty lies in replicating or cloning the key people. I think it is all about people at any stage of organization maturity!
Network, ask for help, hire differently, outsource non-key activities and keep on trying till a few things appear to work.
Most importantly, be extremely transparent with existing employees, vendors, contractors etc. Those who decide to stick with you would be sharing your dream and hopefully support you through thick and thin. Try to mature your HR processes as early as possible in your lifecycle. This has helped us immensely in identifying and retaining talent.
Pointers to fellow entrepreneurs
Extremely important, and a challenge. Without customers it is difficult to build a brand and, paradoxically, customers don't come till you have a brand. So, we did what all start-up companies do; beg for orders, accommodate difficult customers, provide an extremely high level of service while persisting with the online marketing activities. The culmination of this was when a recent customer said that she found out how big we were when she saw over 25,000 pages on us on the Yahoo! search and placed an order just because of that.
We have been constantly writing on Web forums and portals, attending and sponsoring events, using channels such as NASSCOM, TiE, NHRDN, LinkedIn, SHRM, HR Technology Conference for Networking. We have also built a formidable team of advisors who have been constantly guiding us.
“The maturing of technology platforms such as Web Browsers, SaaS acceptability by the market in large, good security standards and very low cost of bandwidth are further enablers.”
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On successfully enroling the first set of customers
We introduced a shrink-wrapped, completely packaged solution for SMEs called EmpXtrack-Lite. The product concept had significant inputs from Prayag Consulting as well. Last year, we have had large market acceptability of the product both in India and overseas.
With a much higher understanding of the market and customer needs, we are now ready to introduce more packaged products and are starting a completely new marketing campaign.
What the future holds
With the baby boomer generation retiring, there is a massive talent shortage in the Western countries. Organizations will have to optimize their workforce to deliver at the lowest possible manpower requirements, and any solution that can help them do this effectively will be a sure winner.
The maturing of Internet based technology platforms, acceptance of the SaaS concept by the market at large, good security standards and low cost of bandwidth are further enablers. We are fortunately in a good period at the right time and hope to capitalize on the trend.
Looking at the opportunity size and receptivity of our offerings, we may (hopefully) be very busy for many more years.
Market perspective
I feel that the On Demand offering has a quicker commoditization cycle which will naturally happen in the case of HR products as well. While the US and European markets are fairly mature in terms of what they want, (leading to quicker stabilization and commodity based products which may happen in the next 2 – 3 years), India, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, China and other emerging markets have a long way to go. So, there will be many opportunities for services paired with product selling even in the future.
“People make the organization and each organization acquires a unique DNA. I think it is all about people at any stage of organization maturity.”
|
|||
Pleasures and pains of being an entrepreneur
People make the organization and each organization acquires a unique DNA. To begin with, it was difficult to identify our DNA. Now, as we are growing, the difficulty lies in replicating or cloning the key people. I think it is all about people at any stage of organization maturity!
Network, ask for help, hire differently, outsource non-key activities and keep on trying till a few things appear to work.
Most importantly, be extremely transparent with existing employees, vendors, contractors etc. Those who decide to stick with you would be sharing your dream and hopefully support you through thick and thin. Try to mature your HR processes as early as possible in your lifecycle. This has helped us immensely in identifying and retaining talent.
Pointers to fellow entrepreneurs
- Be patient
- Continue to believe in yourself
- Experiment
- Have fun