According to the recent surveys on SaaS adoptions, the Small to Medium Businesses (SMB’s) looks more set and open to experiment with SaaS offerings.

As per  Gartner’s Report, SaaS systems have made significant inroads in satisfying the SMB market and not surprisingly, analysts expect the strongest growth in SaaS applications (specifically CRM) spending to come from Asia/Pacific, where revenue forecasts presume to grow from $410 million in 2007 to $840 million in 2012.

The Springboard survey also highlights that the Asian small and mid-size business (SMB) market is the sole market dominated, by local and inexpensive SaaS vendors. Analysts suggest that local vendors will often prevail over the large Western software companies due to software localization requirements in the SMB sector.

The findings highlight that the SaaS deployments are no longer considered a newer model of deployment due to the level of acceptance seen in the end-users, which also suggest growing opportunities for SaaS adoptions.

With the numerous advantages like superior ROI, zero-capex mode, lowered TCO,  reduced AMC’s, easier and hassle free up gradations,  higher up-time,  customizable interface,  faster implementation along with deeper functionalities makes  SaaS  “The Best  Fit” for the SMB segments as this  segment usually strive hard to cope up with the cost implications to meet  the business standards.

The subscription based mode with “pay as you go” has got the momentum around SaaS is accelerating and is a boon for SMB’s.

Also the extensive usage of Smartphone’s, Internet, and notepads has revolutionized  the software climate which has witnessed a drastic change in terms of developing new technology and its adoption. These new technologies are amongst the biggest reasons for SaaS adoption by SMB’s.

Net net, SMB is a major segment seeing a constant growth and SaaS solutions are custom made solutions for the SME segments to leverage the advantages at a much lower Total Cost of Ownership

Five o’clock in the morning and I am making my way towards this auto with trepidation and a sense of resignation – trepidation that the guy will reject my request to take me to the nearest BIAS stop (now that’s another tremendous service I’ll talk about one of these days), resignation to the idea of bargaining first thing in the morning. Auto drivers by definition are great negotiators, it seems, so I am pleasantly surprised when he says “OK” without hesitation. Must be my lucky day, I tell myself, and hop in, waiting for the bombshell on the price. The guy turns around and flips the meter, signaling clearly that he’ll go with what it says at the end of the ride. Oh my God! This is truly my lucky day – no tension, no discomfort. Maybe all my sales calls in Hyderabad today will work out this well!
We ride out towards the bus stop near Esteem Mall and get talking. While he merrily prattles on about how the Govt. isn’t doing enough about everything from the roads to the cause of Kannada, I’m thinking about how unexpectedly easy this whole transaction has been. I’m thinking this is how every customer interaction should be. I’m thinking what we can do for our customers not only to make their interactions with us easy but to help make their clients’ interactions with them easy. After all, that’s what good CRM is all about, right? So, between polite “Houda?”s and “Correctu”s, I’m thinking of touch-points in Impel that we should focus on, to make it even more effective for our customers.
Ten minutes later, we draw up to this bus stop, I get out and pay the fare. As I turn away, he says: “Happy journey, sir!” I tell you, that just made my day! Here I was, at the end of what I’d consider a good sales interaction, and the service provider just moved it many, many notches higher. He inferred my intent from the location he was dropping me at and, while he did not need to wish me, he did. That shows a number of things about the man – a general service-orientation, of course, but more importantly, a genuine, predictive interest in the well-being of his passenger. That latter factor is a terrific characteristic in some people, but the point of good CRM is to help a whole organization behave in this manner. IMHO, that’s what a good CRM solution needs to do for a company – make client interactions with it not just good but great. It is our intent with Impel to do just that.

Last week, we had a demo of SMS access to Impel CRM data to a prospective FMCG customer. They had a high-powered team including their Head of Sales, Head of Marketing and Head of IT present. As part of the demo, we showed them how a salesperson could add an order via SMS. When the SMS-added order showed up in the CRM system within seconds, I swear you could hear their jaws dropping and hitting the table. 

And within seconds there was an excited babble of conversation of how they could cut their order entry cycle time from over 24 hours to less than 5 minutes. How they could cut out a sequence of paper order from customer, faxed to headquarters, then entered into their system by hand into a single SMS entry made directly into the system by the salesperson on the field. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation that they did, revealed that they could cut their order entry cost from Rs 28 per order to Rs 4.50 per order. 

And with SMS being available everywhere from Jhumritalaya to Anantnag to Port Blair, they thought that this would be the most cost-effective way for their field sales people to access Impel. 

It was great to see such enthusiasm. Our next challenge - getting this message out to everyone that can use it!!!

We’re putting together a system for Loyalty Program Management in Impel. We’re pretty far along, but a couple of recent events have caused me to seriously reconsider everything we ever designed in this space. Let me describe them – you be the judge!
A couple of weeks ago, I was in Delhi visiting prospects. At the end of the day, I managed to get to the Airport early (thanks to the DND – Yay!). So here I was, sitting in the Kingfisher (another Indian creation that’s very high quality – and the short skirts don’t hurt either) lounge, drinking tea, when I overhear two hostesses talking. One of them tells the other about a well-known politician coming in to take a flight in a few minutes. Nearly 45 minutes later, no sign of Mr. Pol, so I ask her where he was. “Oh, he’s come in and taken off already, sir!”, she says. How come we did not see him, then? “Ah well, we have a VVIP lounge, you see”. OK, so we mere mortals don’t deserve such treatment – that’s fine. After all, he IS a man that needs Z security for his “contribution” to society…
Cut to earlier this week. I’m standing in line, again in Delhi airport, and there’s Nandan Nilekani. He walks up like any one of us mere mortals, stands in line and waits for his turn. Having worked for him years ago, I know him slightly, so I asked him if he does not get VVIP treatment. He laughed good-naturedly and shrugged the question away. The funny thing is, none of the ground staff seemed to have recognized him. For a man who built one of the best-known international brands out of India, he was treated no different from all other mere mortals.
The point here is not the character of Infosys founders vs. that of politicians – we’ve accepted that difference years ago. What set me thinking was: how do you model this in a Loyalty Program? How do you ensure that the unassuming CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company that probably contributes to a very large part of your revenues gets as good, if not better, treatment as a pol that people automatically recognize? What mechanisms can be built into your systems such that employees are automatically intimated about such people? The pol is easy to identify – there are probably half-a-dozen “retainers” to tell you who he is. With the likes of Nandan, though, you need to tie his Frequent Flyer number to factors like revenue earned from his company, brand image of his company, general contribution to economy and so on. And someone needs to set some of that up so it pops up at the counter when he presents his ticket. Even that is not enough if he checks in on the web, since ground staff will see him only at the gate. Whew, this is getting way too complex.
While I’m working on this complex design, can I please sit in the VVIP Lounge?!

Around 9:26pm one day I received an SMS from a very close friend of mine. It said “my dad is no more…”.It shocked me to know that her dad had passed away. I immediately called her back and got to know that her dad had a sudden cardiac arrest. It happened so suddenly that I was at a loss for words, I had spoken to her the previous day and he was in good health. “Well that’s how life is”, said my room mate, “It never comes with any kind of guarantee. You never know how long you are going to live. It’s very uncertain…”

While lying down on my bed and trying to sleep all that kept troubling me was “…You never know how long you are going to live…” The very next thing that came to my mind is the so called “corporate work style”, that has become the lifestyle for many. All that we are concerned about today is only our work, work and work! People rush to their offices in the morning (need I add that most of them are so busy that they don’t even have time for breakfast) and reach back home late at night (irrespective of their official office hours). Family members seldom get enough time to spend with each other. Most often people don’t have time to talk to their family members in the next room but have enough time to chat with a person who might be miles away. Well, feels like we have forgotten what’s important, and how to strike the right balance between our professional and personal life. We don’t get enough time to spend with our family members. God forbid, someday something can happen to us or any of our family members? Will we ever get a second chance to spend some time with them? Will our money and social status be helpful then?

Well, all I feel is that we should learn to balance our work life and personal life. The day we mix it up, our life gets mixed up. When we are at work, be focused towards whatever you do and do it well. Office hours are for office work and after that our focus should shift towards ‘HOME’ and our personal life. Let’s have a control on our lives. We got to remember that life is very uncertain and not always do we get a second chance. We have been has given us this great opportunity to live life to the fullest. Let’s not waste this wonderful gift called ‘LIFE’

Viral marketing has evolved from word of mouth to a much more scientific endeavor in the online world.
Viral marketing is defined on Wikipedia as “marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.”
So how does this work into the art of Viral Publicity?
The marketing is rapidly changing. What once was an environment in which the application was practically guaranteed to go viral has shifted to one in which one need to come up with creative ways of marketing the application. Viral marketing has paved the way and has become one of the top methods used in advertising.
It’s all about positioning yourself or your message in the right place to get the highest level of publicity possible.
Now, there’s also the right time which needs to be considered. By observing what kinds of trends or things are getting publicity at any certain time, one can use them to leverage their own publicity.
Based on my previous posts and some additional thinking about the subject I’ve found that through Facebook, I can go viral. Here are some mechanisms that companies have used to successfully “go viral”.
* Email invitations
* Communication
* Submitting Articles to the blogs
* Adding and submitting applications
* Linking
* Branding
* Word of Mouth
Viral marketing can work wonders for any business, web site or product. It can be a great source of sales leads, one-way links and targeted traffic. Yet, many marketers are not taking full advantage of this ‘viral factor’ in their marketing efforts.
Viral marketing ‘done right’ can have many benefits. It will:
* increase your link popularity (often one way links)
* increase targeted traffic to your site
* build your brand recognition
* create targeted leads for your products
* automate your marketing efforts
For example, right now on Facebook one could easily use this publicity. We have seen how people have become addicted to Facebook and its working wonders. To attract the most users to the applications, conference presenters in one of the Toronto sessions suggest the following:
Keep it viral – Create something that people can download and share with friends in their group. Facebook has an application that allows users to design pets and allow their friends to pet and feed it as well. Forget about traditional marketing methods; the users are your marketers, says this gentleman, Cherwenka.
Make it fun – An application has to enable users in an engaging action that can also involve other users. Graffiti on Facebook lets people put their art on their friends’ walls. My Aquarium allows users to create their own online marine collection and show it off to their friends.
Make it useful – Have some stuff you want to get rid of? Ricardo Covo, founder of Web Nodes, a software development company in Milton, Ont., developed an application that enables users to post items for sale or items they are looking for. Another app, the Lending Club, enables community members to borrow money from each other. Carpool, by Zimride, does just that — connect drivers with passengers so that no one has to drive alone.
Appeal to vanity– Facebook users love to tell their friends what they are doing here and now, according to Meagan Marks, platform evangelist for Facebook.
We at PK4 tried the viral way of marketing with our applications for Facebook too. Here is an article which I liked.

You can put so many things in a blog, but what distinguishes one from the other? Is it the content, the author, the title or what? That’s not an easy one to answer; there are whole lists of things that make each one unique and interesting. Hopefully, I’ll be able to blog about things at my work place, things in my life, things to make you think, things to question what you really believe. It’s important to keep the interest alive to keep you coming back for another read, or to talk with your colleagues and friends about the things you’ve read in the blog.
As human beings we’re always curious, and have opinions on almost everything. But when we have read the topics from others we may or may not agree with them. And it’s quite obvious that you may not like or agree to what the others say, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
But still, this is how you get to write your blog. You give your opinion; otherwise comment on others.
Would you like to comment on mine!

One fine day, I got a mail from Kishore, talking about facebook and an overview of an app that has to be built for it. This is what he said in his mail: “Allow the user to create a list of anything they want”. I was wondering how this could be done – what about the database design? Does he want a spread sheet app? My thoughts were all over the place. Finally, when we met for a discussion, the conversation stopped thanks to phone call he got. I got to thinking of an idea, but I was hesitant to talk about it since it was against “Normalization”. I made up my mind that, even if the design is not good, “at most, he’ll reject it”, so I decided to tell him. I described the design: it had only 3 tables, I new, but was stuck on the third table. Between us, though, we figured it all out by the end of the conversation.

I was happy with myself for thinking up this solution, but I was still reluctant to implement it, since it went against everything I’ve read about database design. I consoled myself saying “That’s life, let us move on” (quote of Kishore and my favourite). We finally designed, developed the app and rolled it out in facebook. I was a bit worried when we submitted the app for approval. As I expected, it was rejected for buggy UI and I was bit upset. But we fixed the bugs and released it again that same night – it was approved the next day. I was so thrilled to see my app on facebook!

Now the next worry started: we were worried about the number of users that would begin to use it. The first day it was only 34, the next day it went to 76, and it kept growing. I was happy that we had more than 500 users for “My Lists”. Everybody is using the app regularly and users give us suggestions for enhancements.

Now, I am very happy I “broke the rule”. Breaking rules for a good cause is not bad, especially in the field of IT!

Got a great idea that could pull in millions of users on Facebook? That neat app that thousands of salesforce.com customers would give their eye teeth for? Need to pull together an app that would get data from Amazon and location information from Google maps? Or an app that gets data from digg and eBay? Need information from RSS feeds and wikis?

One technology that is showing promise to get all of this done is that of “mashups”. A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API. Many people are experimenting with mashups using Microsoft, Google, eBay, Yahoo, Flickr and facebook APIs. [Source: Wikipedia].  Most mashups do more than just integrate services and content; in general, they benefit users in a way that’s better and different than the individual services that they use.

Combining data and code from third-party sources has enabled mashups that add creativity and functionality to web applications. However, browsers are poorly designed to pass data between domains, forcing developers to abandon security for functionality. In addition, mashups on the browser are usually written in Javascript, which could lead to the possibility of malicious code getting executed on your desktop. One way to get around this is to use what are known as server side mashups. We call them Smashups.

Essentially, there are two primary mashup styles – server side mashups (Smashups) and client side mashups. Smashups integrate content and data on the server, while a client side mashup integrates content and data on the client. In a smashup, the server acts as a proxy between the web application on the client and the other web site(s) that takes part in the mashup. Client side mashups mostly use Javascript within a browser and are meant primarily for an interactive user experience. In a Smashup, the client side mashup logic is moved to the server.

Smashup Advantages.

One of the biggest challenges of building a mashup is contending with the basic security protection provided by the browser security sandbox. To protect against malicious attacks, most browsers allow XMLHttpRequest (the basic Ajax Javascript object) to communicate only with the site domain. If the mashup requires a service that is not the server of origin, there’s no way to access it.  In a smashup, the server and not the Javascript code in the browser accesses the service on the other website. Therefore, the smashup is not subject to the browser security sandbox and can access the other site.
There are some other inherent advantages to using a smashup:

• The proxy used in a smashup can act as a buffer between the client and the other website; protecting the client from problems on the other site.
• In cases, where the other site sends back a large amount of data, the server can break up the data into more manageable chunks and send it to the client.
• The data returned from the other site can be cached on the server. Subsequent requests from the client can then be served up from the server reducing unnecessary requests to the other server and increasing the speed of delivery to the client.
• Data returned from the other site may need to be transformed into a different format. The server can transform the data into a format such as JSON, making it easier for the browser to handle the data.
• Security requirements can be handled much more easily server to server using secure protocols. The server could make concurrent and synchronous calls to many data sources at the same time. Most browsers limit the number of concurrent XMLHttpRequests to a small number.
• On the server-side, the smashup can massage the data to be cross-browser compliant 

Building Smashups quickly and easily. 

Regardless of whether you are considering client side mashups or smashups, the basic problem is that creating a mashup is not easy without being an expert programmer. Smashups have advantages in execution, but they are not easy to set up. You still need to be able to code in PHP, ASP.NET, Java or some programming language. You need to understand and be comfortable with Javascripting and understand Web Services.
 

Introducing zeroCode. Here’s your easy, quick way to build server side mashups. The biggest advantage you have is that you can build smashups with absolutely no coding skills. No looking at green screens or futzing around with command lines. A simple point and click environment enables you to build even complex smashups, truly zero coding. Add to that the fact that zeroCode is a completely on-demand environment (www.zerocode.com). That means you have nothing to download and nothing to install. You build on the web and you deploy on the web.

Try it out and see how easily you can build a smashup with zeroCode.