Why Salesforce India is Primed for Growth Over the Next 3 Years
Sometimes, innovation comes when you least expect it. Like many, we have been forced to adapt to a drastically changed world in the midst of the pandemic. But out of that change has come accelerated digital transformation we wouldn’t have otherwise achieved so quickly.
This year, our region has had the privilege of experiencing two major announcements, including:
- The appointment of Arundhati Bhattacharya as Salesforce India’s first CEO in April 2020.
- Salesforce Hyperforce for local data hosting in India, which will open up about 60% of total addressable market, unlocking opportunity for the whole ecosystem.
This kind of investment really underlines Salesforce’s commitment to India and opens up a large opportunity for our partners. With these achievements in our toolbelt, we are poised for tremendous growth and opportunity over the next few years.
Capitalizing on Opportunities in the Big Middle
Anyone who has worked in India understands the savviness our customers demonstrate and their demand for excellence because of it. What makes Salesforce India unique is our flexibility and ingenuity to meet these needs on the front end and our agility and cost efficiency on the backend. This is also reflected through the speed and efficiency of our partners. Together, we’re bringing incredibly innovative work to our market, including both India-centric and externally beneficial new solutions.
As we look ahead, we have several opportunity areas where we can double down.
Outcome-Oriented Models
Investments in our technology and platform cannot be isolated from our business goals. Whether through managed services or taking greater responsibility for outcomes, this idea has tremendous power to impact customers’ bloodline and legacy. This will not only build more confidence with customers, but command more premium.
Differentiation
Creating differentiation in the market based on assets and intellectual properties is extremely important for our ecosystem. Without differentiation, everything gets commoditized and pushed down to the lowest common denominator of price. We must extract out replicable items and create assets that command premium.
Our Consultative Approach
There’s something to be said for putting yourself in the customer’s shoes. Doing this allows us to see things from their perspective and has been a very productive way of working thus far. We’ve even adopted a “shadowing approach,” which allows us to go on-site and see how call centers respond to questions or view the customer experience in retail outlets. This level of insight helps customers build confidence in our technology and platform, as well as our team’s abilities and service.
Platform Centricity
Salesforce is not (and never has been) a series of separate products that are forced to work together. We are a true platform that solves a plethora of business challenges. This advantage must continue to be consumed, analyzed, articulated, and presented in the customer’s context to not only create more platform stickiness but set us up for the next level of service potential. With the platform as a foundation, we can keep adding on workloads, bringing in additional services revenue, and creating more profitability for the whole ecosystem.
With these opportunities in mind, our market focus is two-fold:
- Winning the enterprise and large marketplaces.
- Going broad to address the “big middle,” which includes the diverse geographical spread of customers in the SMB or mid-market segment. We have seen a lot of specialization in industry-focused solutions that solve for specific business problems. The opportunity as we move toward next year and beyond will be huge, allowing our partners to monetize the entire program and focus on this large middle bucket.
Looking Beyond the Pandemic
Like many businesses, we’re hoping to finish the year strong and begin 2021 by helping our entire ecosystem bounce back to growth after the effects of COVID-19. We’re also working to set ourselves up for the mid-term, which includes devising our strategies for the entire next year.
Long-term, we’re forecasting the next two to three years for sustainable growth that helps us address key market challenges by focusing on:
- More asset-based models, which reduce time to market and create standard outcomes to showcase value over cost.
- The appropriate level of partnership to help customers manage change and avoid ad-hocism.
- Propositions that solve for multiple problems instead of rebooting the whole ecosystem in order to combat market diversity and dynamism.
With these considerations and strategies in mind, I’m looking forward to several incredible years ahead for Salesforce India. I truly believe that with our expert team, incredible partners, and Salesforce’s investment in the region, we can create an engine for driving sustainable growth.
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