The Hindu Business Line : To market, to market

Unless technology reaches its target audience in a relevant form, it just remains an unopened mystery, its benefits unknown to the outside world. Tech companies cannot hope that their technology will sell itself. While technology can no doubt be a big boon to emerging business enterprises, it’s a real pity if it doesn’t reach them in time. Of what use is technology if the end users are not aware of it? This is where marketing comes into play! Yes, even tech com panies need to take note of this nine-letter word.

Marketing can no longer be dismissed as a frivolous activity that ‘techies’ can afford to ignore. Even as those in the technology space wake up to this reality, one company is literally ‘driving’ more than a few extra miles to market its products and services, especially to the lower end of the market where technology awareness is rather low.

Cisco India’s mobile ‘Network on Wheels’ mobile van has been criss-crossing the country for the last one-and-a-half years playing the messiah, consciously targeting the small and medium business (SMB) units in various industrial locations – first creating awareness on the benefits of technology and then spreading knowledge about its core solutions so that they can “leverage the power of networking technology for business growth.” Some of the solutions aboard the van are technologies for security, wireless mobility, unified IP communication and conferencing.

A chunk of Cisco’s marketing budget goes into SMB marketing, as the company believes one needs marketing to reach this set of customers. While Cisco’s networking solutions are well known in the high- (with the likes of Infosys and Wipro) and middle-end user markets, it is the small and medium enterprises which pose a challenge. The SMB market is diverse, scattered and hard to reach. It is also largely ignorant about how technology can make a difference to their businesses. And this is the market that Cisco is keen on tapping.

Says Pramodh Menon, Senior Vice-President-Commercial, Cisco India & SAARC: “How do we link technology with business relevance so that technology creates a business impact? Before selling our networking solutions we first have to make customers aware of what technology can do for them. While the high-touch enterprise customers and mid-market customers are fairly aware of technology and its benefits, there is a large mass of small and medium businesses that we need to connect with.”

It is estimated that there are 7.5 million SMBs in India and much of this segment is not aware of the “productivity benefits that technology can bring to them in terms of profitability and business.” Of this 7.5 million, Cisco’s addressable market around 700,000 business units which the company thinks can benefits from its solutions. As of today, Cisco sells to less than 3 per cent of that addressable population.

“It is important to ensure that all benefits provided to large customers are available to small businesses as well so that they too get the benefits of technology. The idea was to connect with this large untapped portion in a way that is relevant to them and gets them excited. That was the genesis of the NOW van,” explains Menon.

The NOW programme was kicked off in May last year and the van has so far covered around 3,000 SMBs across the country, with a special focus on tier-2 and -3 markets. The NOW van has “every conceivable technology relevant to the SMBs” including the IP phone, other collaborative tools that integrate voice mail and online conferences and enable exchange of documents, solutions for Internet security, mobility and communication.

The NOW van has travelled to 25 cities including New Delhi (NCR), Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Karnal, Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad. The van will cover key industrial cities in the South including Kochi, Coimbatore, Madurai and Puducherry. The van is taken to industrial clusters, individual premises and to technology events which Cisco is organising. “Our target is to reach 15,000 customers in every city, town and neighbourhood by July 2008. Of course, we will continue the programme in perpetuity along with our 1,500 odd channel partners.”

The response to the NOW van has been quite encouraging, with business houses eager to adopt technology best practices, says Menon. The accent is on offering relevant customised solutions to suit the needs of its potential customers. “Wherever we have had meaningful demonstrations, half of that has been converted into actual sales. How successful we are depends on how relevant our offering is and how well we carry that message into the market. A 50 per cent success rate is a huge one and we owe that to the fact that the technology we offer is relevant to the SMB’s business.”

Apart from India, the NOW programme is also being run in the US and Canada. India is the first country in the Asia Pacific region to adopt this model. China just got started on the NOW project. Cisco India will add more vans and is also looking to put up mobile ‘solution centres’ or kiosks in technology parks for short periods of time.

It certainly looks like Cisco is set to spread its ‘network’ far and wide!

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