Vismaya's multimedia CRM solution

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, JULY 31. In these days of cut-throat competition companies have realised that customer care and retention is vital for survival. According to industry forecasts, the global demand for customer relationship management (CRM) solutions is likely to grow at the rate of 300 per cent over the next three years to reach $21 billion.

While the CRM spend will come mainly from the North American and European markets, the ASIAPAC region should account for $1.3 billion. In India, which does not have a tradition of customer care, the CRM market is just opening up, mainly in the IT, telecom and finance and insurance sectors and is likely to reach $113 million by 2004.

Although complex CRM solutions that can be afforded by giant corporations are available, there was no compact and affordable package for small and medium enterprises.

Existing CRM players have scaled down versions of their offering for the SME segment but these are not capable of handling all sorts of media such as voice, data and video.

Now, a small, 18-month old Bangalore-based company, Vismaya Technologies Pvt. Ltd., has plugged this breach.

It has developed an interaction service suite known as SpelBind for customer contact centres. SpelBind is built on a multimedia platform, provisionally patented by Vismaya, called the Unified Media Contact Centre.

This enables SpelBind to seamlessly support customer interactions across six media, namely, e-mail, chat, message board, telephony, fax and snail mail. Being open-architectured and scalable, it allows "plug and play" of even future media - be it wireless, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) or video.

SpelBind's differentiators include Unified Queue, Directory Manager, Open Standards, Knowledge Management, Universal Tracking and Monitoring and Legacy to new media features. The first release of SpelBind incorporates CT (computerised telephony) server and connect capabilities. The technology roadmap envisages Short Messaging Service and Intranet VOIP capability by September this year, wireless capability by November and streaming video capabilities by March next year.

As for the product roadmap, while the first version is for customer contact centres, the next version will also include a suite for sales and marketing functions in SMEs. Ultimately, the plan is to offer vertical enterprise solutions for healthcare, hospitality, Telco service providers and education. According to Mr. N. S. Srivatsa, founder and CEO of Vismaya, the company is able to offer SpelBind at affordable prices to SMEs because of the very low development cost - a mere Rs. 35 lakhs - incurred on the product.

In order to deliver end-to-end CRM solutions, Vismaya has alliances with consultants such as Andersen, system integrators such as Crompton Greaves, product companies like ECI Telecom and value added resellers like Jupiter Systems.

According to Mr. Vasu Krishnamurthy, chief operating officer of Vismaya, in just the last three months, 38 diverse potential customers in India and abroad have indicated interest in SpelBind. While the product has already been deployed in some contact centres in Chennai and Bangalore as well as a B2B portal for forging equipment information, the product will be soon be introduced at three of the largest contact centres out of Mumbai. Vismaya is also in the process of signing up with two customers in the U.S. and three in the Asia-Pacific region.

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Section  : Business
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