Understanding the entrepreneurial venture of InteractCRM

UNDERSTANDING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURE OF INTERACTCRM

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (Noida Campus)

Date : 13 Dec 2011

Understanding the entrepreneurial venture of InteractCRM Table of Contents UNDERSTANDING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURE OF INTERACTCRM I. II. A. B. C. D. E. III. A. B. IV. V. A. B. VI. VII. Introduction Company Overview About the CEO Mr. Snehal Patel Services Provided Year of inception Sources of funds Reviewing the journey so far Business Plan Operating Plan Marketing Plan Organizational Plan Challenges Faced Attracting the right talent Losing Talent to Competitors Future Growth Learning and Conclusion 1 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 5 6 6 6 6 6

Understanding the entrepreneurial venture of InteractCRM

I.

Introduction
This report contains a brief description of the birth of InteractCRM, a CRM solutions software company. This report contains a description of story behind the foundation of InteractCRM by Mr. Snehal Patel, its current CEO.

II.

Company Overview
A. About the CEO Mr. Snehal Patel
Name: Mr. Snehal Patel Age: 45 Qualification: BE Computer Science, Masters in Computer Science from Cardiff University

B. Services Provided
Founded in 2002, InteractCRM specializes in solutions for CTI Screen pop, Intelligent Contact Routing, Self Service Automation, Speech, Outbound Dialing, Campaign Management, Unified Agent desktop, Social Media Integration, Integrated CC Analytics and Customer Service CRM. Our product suite adds significant value to contact center solutions and have been developed to address specific needs in todays contact center deployments. InteractCRM is an Avaya DevConnect Member and has a System Integration partnership with Avaya Inc and numerous Contact Center solutions companies worldwide. Our services include design, development, implementation and support of Avaya IC/OA, Business Advocate, Avaya VP/IR, PCS, Avaya IQ, CCE, Avaya Aura ContactCenter, AES, Cognos and Loquendo Speech. InteractCRM customers span Financial, Insurance, Education, Healthcare, Telecommunications, Public Transport and Retail sectors. InteractCRM also provides education services to customers, BPs and Avaya associates under the Avaya University umbrella.

C. Year of inception
InteractCRM was started in 2002. Mr. Snehal Patel joined Avaya Singapore and within 11 years rose to the VP level. Being from a wealthy family that already owned two businesses, one in Kolkata and the other in Ahmedabad owned by his father and his brother respectively, Mr. Snehal Patel decided to follow in his familys footsteps and start something of his own.

Understanding the entrepreneurial venture of InteractCRM

D. Sources of funds
Using seed capital of 5 crores given to him by his family, Snehal started using the knowledge, experience and contacts gained at Avaya to provide corporate trainings as a freelance trainer on Avaya products. As the prospects were good, Snehal decided to expand and hire more employees to provide training on Avaya Interaction Center.

E. Reviewing the journey so far

Avaya began concentrating on developing newer products and decided to outsource their trainings to InteractCRM thus giving them more business and more opportunities to grow. InteractCRM began to go from delivering trainings to customizing software solutions and formed a consultancy department. InteractCRM began to diversify in 2005 and began to work on their in house products. Today InteractCRM has grown to 55 employees and is easily a 10-15 million dollar organization.

III.

Business Plan
A. Operating Plan
InteractCRM is a software company; hence its operating plan depends on the services it provides. Services are usually carried out in phases and are either carried out offsite or onsite. The duration of the service depends on the duration of the project. The average life cycles of the different types of the projects are as follows: Type of Project Corporate Trainings Software implementation Software Development Projects Average Life Cycle 2 weeks Depending on the size and the phase of the project (around 2-3 months) Up to 2 months offsite development of the software depending on the requirement and one month implementation

B. Marketing Plan
The marketing plan of InteractCRM is carried out by the Business Development (BD) team. As the IT sector is a B-B market, InteractCRM relies mainly on projects provided by Avaya and Avaya Global Connect. However the CRM solution sector is a niche market and recently InteractCRM has made its reputation as a quality provider of CRM solutions. The BD team has been successfully developing contacts and pitching InteractCRMs products to them by applying various selling strategies such as cold calling. 4

Understanding the entrepreneurial venture of InteractCRM Cold calling usually then results in an appointment where the BD team gives a presentation about the services that InteractCRM can offer.

IV.

Organizational Plan

Organization Structure of InteractCRM CEO

COO

HR

Admin

Deputy GM Projects

Pre-Sales/ Business Analysts

Development Director

Consulting services director

Java Team

Dot NET

Corporate Trainers

Consulting Services

Support Team

Understanding the entrepreneurial venture of InteractCRM

V.

Challenges Faced
A. Attracting the right talent
The software industry is an industry where talent always needs to be trained in accordance with the organizations goals. The big players in the market such as Infosys, LnT Infotech, TCS all capture the bulk of the good talent as they hire in huge numbers. A small company is often the last resort for good IT engineers; hence InteractCRM always looks to recruit fresh graduates and puts them through a series of selection tests that ensures that they recruit the right talent.

B. Losing Talent to Competitors

InteractCRM is a small company where the exposure is a lot more than engineers would receive at larger companies. Hence its a great place to start a career. However the talent pool at InteractCRM is a direct subset of the talent pool at Avaya and Accenture. The engineers often learn everything and move on to larger companies. To counter this, InteractCRM has put in place exit bonds where the employee cannot work with its direct competitors.

VI.

Future Growth
InteractCRM currently has 55 employees. It plans to try to grow up to 200 employees within the next 5 years.

VII.

Learning and Conclusion

InteractCRM as a software company works on an optimum model of obtaining cheap labor by recruiting fresh graduates and then expects them to leave them after 3 years. However, the learning that engineers receive in InteractCRM is much more that they can receive in larger companies.