1. Knoahsoft competes with many companies, i.e. Autonomy etalk, Envision,
NICE Systems, Verint Systems, VPI, in the QA/Performance Management market sector. How do you differentiate your offerings from your competitors?
Based on our own (myself and our CEO Sri Myneni) experiences in running large outsourced call centers (with our sister company, Knoah Solutions) we feel the core elements that are lacking in the enterprise recording and QM space are affordability, simplicity of UI for the full range of roles/users, tight/uniform integration of all functional modules, and ease of installation, configuration and administration. Our goal from the start was to build Harmony as an enterprise capable, scalable suite of tightly integrated and well designed, web-based modules for recording, quality evaluation, surveying, coaching, training, performance management and analytics that would be affordable and easy to configure and use in today’s modern multi-channel contact centers.
By delivering enterprise scale and functionality in an affordable package we are able to win deals across the spectrum of call centers from small to mid-sized (< 200) to very large (> 1000). In competitive situations, in addition to lower pricing, we have seen very positive reaction from prospects on the clean and simple web UI and the tight integration of all the modules working around a central DB for reporting and analytics. We often hear that our competitors have lots of bells and whistles and all the requisite modules, but they don’t seem to play well together due to the fact that they may have been developed through “acquisition integration” rather than deliberate design. For example, a quality assurance person should be able to easily assign a training class from the quality evaluation screen. Why force them to toggle to another screen then search on that agent to set a training class…to us that makes no sense. We believe that because we were built from the ground up with VoIP and Web 2.0 fundamentals, we don’t have to worry about legacy impediments or trying to cobble together disparate systems that came about through acquisition. Our recent discussions with the analyst community seem to confirm our view on the advantage we have in our ground up architecture.
We also feel that the ease of use of our product set is an important but subtle differentiator. While anyone can put fancy graphics and 3D buttons into an application, it doesn’t insure usability. Usability comes from a deep understanding of how users perform their tasks at both an expert and novice level and tuning the features and functions in the UI to optimize those workflows. We support the expert with shortcuts and efficient form/screen layouts and we support the novice by providing integrated help and wizard based walkthroughs for more complex but infrequently performed tasks. As a result, Harmony can facilitate the efficient collaboration of all the roles in the contact center through the tight integration of modules and customizable dashboard portals that support real time and standard reports.
Finally we believe our future customers will learn what our current customers already know…that KnoahSoft’s suite of solutions establishes the important bonds that must exist between the customer, the agent and the supervisor, before, during and after every customer interaction. And more importantly, why pay double or triple the seat price from competitors when you can have all the functionality, analytics and more at a fraction of the cost.
2. The original Knoahsoft product emanated from Knoah Solutions, a successful outsourcing company. How did this journey help in the development of the product?
Ultimately, the broad requirements of a 24x7, 1000+ seat, multi-site, multi-channel outsourcer provided us with the direction and a test bed to develop an innovative, stable and extensible platform for our product architecture. While many of our competitors use key clients to get feedback and beta testing, there is no substitute to having the engineers in the same building as the call center operations folks, getting pulled into day to day issues that challenge the call center and need to be responded to in a timely fashion.
We feel that being in the firing line in support of a 24/7 operation has enabled us to create a very responsive development methodology that allows us to keep pace with ever changing call center requirements. Also, because Knoah Solutions is fairly large, they helped us validate our scalability and various deployment models with their multi-site and branch office network architectures. This experience has translated to a highly responsive support approach that our clients appreciate and rely on. As a result, as our client base grows, we have been able to more easily add client requested features into the KnoahSoft product suite, which, come to think of it is another key differentiator.
Ultimately, the proving ground at Knoah Solutions helped us ensure our solutions are today enterprise and multi-tenant ready.
3. Knoahsoft is in the process of establishing a reseller channel to market the product. Are their advantages to this approach in comparison with a direct sales force?
Yes, we are finding great advantages with our reseller channel model. We sell globally, so we would never be able to adequately scale a direct sales force to uncover all the opportunities available to us. Our reseller channel has effectively doubled in the past year and allows us to have more “feet on the street.” They also hold the relationship with the customer…and that is the key for us.
We feel that through our marketing efforts to our partners, product education and our certified integrations with Cisco and Avaya we provide our partners with the knowledge to present a unified and comprehensive offering at an affordable price. Also we target resellers that are focused on the transition to VoIP in the marketplace. We feel we have the right strategy in place to maximize our resellers and our own revenue now and in the future. Our fundamental focus is to ensure our partners are successful and that they don’t feel we are competing against them. Because if they win then so do we.
4. What new products and company direction can we expect from Knoahsoft in the next twelve months?
We are extremely excited to have just released our flagship Harmony Suite 2.0 in Sept 08. Harmony will offer our customers the full range of enterprise ready enhanced recording, quality evaluation, surveying, coaching, training, performance management and detailed reporting they need for their multi-channel contact centers. Right on the heels of Harmony 2.0, will we be releasing our Speech Analyzer module in Q4 2008 which will provide our customers with tightly integrated “precision monitoring” on spoken keywords or phrases as well as provide a detailed level of refining recordings to gather the best recordings for quality purposes.
In addition, we are also in the planning/research stages in developing future innovations to our Harmony offering by deepening our integrations to Workforce Management solutions, CRMs and to add additional PBX vendor adapters. This roadmap is ostensibly being driven by both direct customer feedback and market opportunities we see in the VOIP and more specifically in the Unified Communications space.
5., What are the areas of high interest in your market sector/s?
We are finding that customers really want tightly integrated, full-featured and easy to use solutions. I think other vendors have been paying lip-service to what integration really means. Our customers want applications that work together and are seamless in their integration; both from the user and administration perspective. They need them to be affordable as well, particularly in the APAC market and India specifically.
An additional benefit to having tight integration is that it provides for a more collaborative work environment between the agent and the supervisor For example, our messaging portal provides both agents and supervisors with direct notification to pending tasks and actions, such as pending trainings for the agent or the number of evaluations or coachings due during the week for a supervisor. This integrated tool empowers both agents and supervisors and creates “harmony” in the contact center.
While tight integration is certainly important in our market space, we are also seeing a high level of interest in the ability to do post call customer surveys via the IVR or web. In our Survey module, our customers have a combined record of the survey data and the actual call recording. This ties the customer’s evaluation of agent performance with the supervisor’s evaluation and gives a holistic view on the efficiency of not only that agent but the contact center overall. While the survey data is invaluable to the contact center it can also be leveraged across the management, marketing and sales departments.
At the enterprise level we are also seeing the increased level of attention being paid to speech analytics. We think speech analytics will truly help foster the role of the quality assurance person by providing them with the best distribution of call recordings to be evaluated. In addition, with speech analytics inherent ‘precision monitoring” capability, companies will be able to identify trends, anticipate opportunities, adjust processes to meet business objectives and take action at the right-time.
Finally, reporting and analytics is paramount. Reporting combined with performance management KPIs (key performance indicators) metrics provide contact center staff with measurable and obtainable goals and objectives. This helps improve employee satisfaction and overall performance. Moreover, our performance management module enables integration of external datasets with our broad collection of internal data for a truly integrated set of scorecards. This provides our customers with a unified view of their business operations that is unique in the industry.
6. What do you consider your greatest challenges as a company in establishing your presence in the marketplace?
As with any relatively new company in an established market, our biggest challenge is developing brand recognition and establishing ourselves as a viable competitor in the enterprise space currently occupied by the largest 3-4 vendors in the space. We need to educate buyers that there is a more affordable alternative that is as comprehensive as the traditional offerings in the market. To get there we need to be innovative in our approach not only from a technology perspective but from a sales and marketing perspective as well.
One of the ways we feel we will build enterprise class credibility and win customers is by first focusing our sales and marketing efforts in AsiaPac where there is a much more level playing field among the top tier competitors. Just this year we started to really focus our sales and marketing efforts in countries such as India and it is proving to be a very effective strategy for us. Our partnerships with Cisco and Avaya are extremely strong, particularly in India, and we have been able to win a number of 500+ seat deals in India over the past 6 months. As those customers get up and running on the Harmony platform we intend to carry that momentum back here to the US and EMEA.
From a technology/product perspective, because we are an agile and innovative company that does not have any legacy dependencies, we are able to address specific customer requirements in our product in a rapid fashion. This flexibility is a competitive strength for us as we can tailor our solution to meet specific customer requirements which enables us to win opportunities. Flexibility, responsiveness and reliability are the key cornerstones of our marketing/sales strategy.
7. How do expect the downturn in the economy (perceived and/or real) to affect your marketing and sales efforts?
Actually, because our 2008 sales and marketing efforts have been focused in the AsiaPac/India markets we have not felt the effects of any perceived downturn in the economy. The Indian economy is strong and we have been winning a number of very large deals, including a 2500+ seat opportunity. As worldwide business budgets get pinched, affordability becomes a key factor in deciding what tool to buy. As a result, we are seeing more opportunities to bid on enterprise sized deals here in the US through our VAR partners. We don’t see much slow down in the general conversion to VOIP in the contact center and as long as that stays strong we will see corresponding growth in business opportunities for our solutions.
8. There is always a concern about the financial stability of a company, especially with a relative newcomer like Knoahsoft. Please comment.
We are a completely self funded organization that is currently cash flow positive. I think that speaks volumes to our ability to succeed in this market. We have low operational costs, an OEM relationship with a large IP telephony vendor and a proven sales strategy. All of this was done without any reliance on external investment capital. As we move forward we will be looking at obtaining external investment capital to help us grow faster, but for the moment we are set to be in this business for the long term.