For most companies in India, CRM is restricted to setting up call centres and getting their front-end in place. We still don't see companies going for enterprise CRM implementations. So what is the future of CRM in India?
It is true that most companies first address the Web channels and set up call centres. This is the way it has happened around the globe and it makes a lot of sense, because top priority is to be able to service the needs of your or else they will not stay with you. And call centres enable you to do that. However, call centres also have a whole host of technology involved, from a help desk to a customer database. Besides, you need to factor in your back-end as well or call centres and front office suite by itself won't take you very far.

I have met a lot of CEO's of the big companies and have seen a lot of excitement about CRM in India. I am hopeful, we will see at least five to six good implementations by next year. Moreover, the call centre business and business processing outsourcing (BPO) are happening, where MNCs like GE-run customer campaigns from India. This will fuel the growth of CRM in India.

Another factor which influences growth in the demand for call centres is deregulation and increase in the mobile population. Since, both are happening in India, the CRM market in India is expected to grow to Rs 100 crore by 2001.

What is PWC's target market for CRM in India?
We will be targeting big companies in telecom, financial services, insurance, hi-tech, aviation, utilities, and automobile sectors. We are starting a Siebel implementation for an Indian ISP next week and are talking to a lot of prospective customers. We are also going to hire 30 people in the CRM division in India, within the next six months for implementing the CRM solutions in client companies. Enterprise CRM solutions are quite similar to ERP solutions. In fact, we see a lot of leading ERP companies offering CRM solutions as well.

Do you see, companies like SAP, BAAN, PeopleSoft and Oracle, all of whom are now focussing on CRM as well, as competition?
They might be targeting the same customers, but fact is, all they have is select CRM modules and not the complete solution. For instance, SAP has sales force automation (SFA) modules, but does not have call centre software. Baan acquired a call centre software company called Aurum, two years ago and tried to integrate it with Baan. But today both are facing financial difficulties. PeopleSoft bought Vanitff last year and is still working on integrating the Vantiff call centre solution with its product. Both ERP and CRM have similar implementation procedures.

Many ERP implementations failed due to time and subsequently, cost overruns. Does the same future await CRM implementations as well?
Some of the ERP implementations were so costly, because of the older model of first doing business process re-engineering (BPR) first and then deciding which technology to implement. This resulted in wastage of a lot of valuable time.

However, PWC does both the BPR and technology implementation concurrently and is therefore, able to complete CRM implementations between six to nine months. The cost is roughly $5,000 per user, which includes everything from hardware, software, implementation, and training -and is pretty reasonable.

But shouldn't the requirements of a customer be analysed before implementing a solution?
Yes, so before implementation, we do a GAP analysis of technology required and capabilities of different solutions, which takes just one month.