Nearly every time one of us presents Impel to larger prospects, one key question that comes up is “How about customization?” Impel is very configurable and provides many ways of doing things without paying for custom work, but there come times when customization is inevitable. Particularly for the medium- or large-sized business that has processes in place – the CRM solution needs to reflect at least some of that. And that needs customization. There’s the 64-lakh-Rupee question – Kaun banega programmer? We guys, who own the product? Or a partner whom we appoint? The way the market works, companies that own products don’t take on customization. They hand that off to partners who will make the product work exactly the way you, dear customer, want it to work. That’s the way VCs like product companies to execute, too – build the overall product and let partners work with customers. That way, you’ll build an “eco-system” around your product. Lots of programmers out there, working for lots of software companies, will be singing paeans to your technology, since their own livelihood is tied to your product. What could be better for a product company?

The question, IMHO, is not what is better for the product company but what is better for the customer. The partner has paid gobs of money to be “certified” on the product and his/her livelihood stems from the hours s/he puts on the work. So s/he has a built-in bias to raise rates and increase custom-work hours. The increase in hours may not happen intentionally, but let’s face it, the partner is a service provider and would like to take as little risk as possible in estimating a job. And, having already signed up for the product, there’s little risk that the customer refuses to work with that partner. So it’s not surprising that “implementation” takes twice the money that “license” or “subscription” does. Net effect, there’s a whole eco-system built – on the customer’s money and time.

Here at PK4, we take a different approach, something we call “Principal-driven Customization”. We take on complete responsibility, both for the Subscription and for the Customization. And we do that for the many years that the customer uses Impel. We do involve partners, but they either sell Impel or provide us contract resources – they do not estimate an implementation and then bill the customer. So we have a very strong bias to keep the customization work low, for the following reasons:

• We begin with the premise that, if Impel is not valuable as it is for at least half the work-force planning to use it, it is not a good fit for an SME. Being able to configure – not customize – Impel in a couple of days for half our prospect’s users is a critical barometer for the ultimate success of our implementation. Compared to their large-company colleagues, SME managers are typically more cost-conscious and less willing to wait for custom work to complete. So our ability to provide “immediate gratification” is very important.
• We are in the business of SaaS Subscriptions, not Custom Services. So our intent is always to reduce the amount of custom work we do for a specific customer and, instead, build generic solutions that we can use in various contexts. While this takes more thinking, it actually takes less work overall, since the people who do the thinking are the people who built the product in the first place.
• Because we think of each requirement as being applicable to multiple contexts, we also wind up charging for less hours in any piece of custom work we do. After all, we know that every piece of code we write for a customer will ultimately increase the value of our intellectual property.
• We recognize that the more we delay an implementation, the less we make on the subscription. And subscriptions are what we’re after as a company. So we work hard – and smart – to get our customers up and running as quickly as we can. And we do that by using a combination of configuration and customization.
• The traditional wisdom is that product companies must not “sully their hands” with services, but we believe that such an idea is irrelevant in the Indian context. Here, people have built huge, very successful, hugely valuable companies in the Services space. They’ve obviously done something right! Being worried about having a large workforce is typical in a Western context, where the cost-to-company of most employees runs to over $ 100,000. Even with the galloping salaries in India, we’re not yet there yet, recession-proof growth notwithstanding!
• Ultimately, regardless of all the theorizing, we believe that if it helps our customers grow, it is a good thing to do. And our taking on the onus of custom work is good for our customers, not only when they sign up but later, too, when their businesses grow and they want to do more with their CRM. Yes, it puts pressure on us to deliver not just a robust CRM solution but one that is customized, too. But that’s part of the deal – if it’s good for customers, we’ll do it.

Our approach to customization, then, is similar to our approach to our product: Make it work in the Indian context. So here’s what our engineers will say when someone asks about customization: Main hoon na.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Impel OnDemand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.