The Hindu Business Line : Business development CMM model to be introduced

SOFTWARE Quality Center (SQC) India, the subsidiary of a US- based process improvement firm, is introducing Business Development CMM (BD-CMM) model, a pioneering and `inclusive' standard for improving practices across organisations.

Mr Krishnan Puthucode, Chief Executive Officer, told Business Line that this latest Capability Maturity Model (CMM) would seek to improve best practices in the business development and sales departments or related functions in organisations, software-centric or not.

SQC has partnered with the Business Development Institute, which has developed and maintains the BD-CMM based on the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI of Carnegie Mellon) CMM models. SEI had granted special permission for developing this variant of the CMM/CMMI.

"This standard is simply remarkable in the sense that it applies to any organisation in any field or sector. Unlike the CMM and CMMI models that apply primarily to software-focused organisations, the BD-CMM is a standard that can be used to improve business development, sales management and sales processes across industries," Mr Puthucode said.

BD-CMM can be expected to find wide applicability in the Indian industry, given the need to be competitive in the global market.

"We are happy to have partnered with SQC to bring the model to India and South-East Asia and hope the industry will find value in improving their sales processes. I look forward to a long and mutually beneficial association", said Mr Howard Nutt, Director of BDI.

Companies are bottomline-driven these days that any standard or model that can visibly improve sales would be a godsend to the CEO, said Mr Puthucode.

Initial results from the BD-CMM have found that companies register progress in processes and practices on a scale of five just as in CMM. Sales capture effectiveness and hit rates on prospecting improved by as much as 50-70 per cent through focus on processes and best practices.

SQC proposes to include companies in Kerala to be on the pilot programme.