Product

SAAS – What’s In It For Vendors?

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SAAS promises zero upfront cost, freedom from maintenance and relief from headaches of updates, and so on. These are all benefits for customers of SAAS. What’s in it for providers of SAAS? Shorter sales cycle is the most obvious benefit. Because buyers don’t need to incur huge licensing costs while signing up for a SAAS … Read more

Omnichannel Couponing Drives CEM Success – Part 2

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In Part-1 of this blog post, I’d described my experience with PayTM’s CEM campaign on Nescafe’s instant coffee bottle. In this part, I’ll describe my experience with the sachet of the same product. If you’re wondering how packing types matter in a CEM campaign, trust me, bottle and sachet pose different challenges and provide different … Read more

Omnichannel Couponing Drives CEM Success – Part 1

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Barring a few exceptions like Dollar Shave Club, consumer brands still don’t sell their products directly to people who use them. Instead, they use the traditional multi-tiered distribution channel comprising distributors, wholesalers and retailers. Ergo they don’t know their end consumers. How do brands overcome the “anonymity” challenge, reach out to end consumers and engage … Read more

Don’t Throw The Baby Out With The Bathwater

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Many people have reacted vehemently against the government’s move to regulate the creation, distribution and usage of Indian maps under the proposed Geospatial Information Regulation bill. Some have even insinuated that the move is a veiled threat to police Google Maps and amounts to “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”. I don’t know whether … Read more

Enhanced Remittance Data Could Multiply Electronic Fund Transfer Volumes

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My property management company in UK wanted me to quote the following reference along with my monthly rent payment: MCS MERIDIAN CLIENT ACCOUNT HOUSE RENT 98 MERIDIAN PLACE JUN 2008 The reference field in the fund transfer screen of my bank’s Online Banking was too short to support this narration. While I could’ve written it easily … Read more

Introducing “Multiply UI” To Reduce Churn Caused By Software’s 95% Problem

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In The IT Industry’s 95% Problem, Gartner Research VP Brian Prentice notes that an average user of a software uses only 5% of the product’s features. In other words, 95% of the features in a software create no value for the overall customer audience. While you could quibble about the exact percentages, no one will deny that … Read more

Why Do Software Companies Outsource Product Management?

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The typical tech startup’s backstory goes as follows: Founders observe a problem in the real world, find a way to use technology to solve the problem, and build a product around the technology. According to common wisdom, product management is the foundation of any startup. Sales, marketing, HR, finance and other functions can come in … Read more

Perils Of Blind Retargeting

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Since the time I published Retargeted Ads or Retarded Ads, I’ve come across many more retargeted ads exhibiting retarded behavior. Take for example the ones from Cleartrip. Well after I’d booked my tickets on its portal, I kept seeing its retargeted ads. I hinted to the OTA that it could try setting frequency caps on … Read more