How much popular is marketing process outsourcing (MPO) in India?
Vinod Harith: Globally, the concept is pretty nascent. If you look at the marketing space, marketing has been one of the major outsourcers of services. It has always been in a fast-based model and have not been in a processed level globally. So, globally the concept itself is very new. We believe that it has potential to go ahead because if you look at all other functions they are going in the functional outsourcing way. If you look at e-governing, financial accounting, HR, etc., all of them are going in the financial outsourcing way. We also believe that marketing will also go in the functional outsourcing way. We are focusing largely on the domestic market but we are now looking at the international market as well. We have acquired a few international client by now. The market size is huge.

What kind of benefits can small and medium enterprises (SMEs) reap out from outsourcing their marketing activities?
Vinod Harith: India has about 26 million SMEs. About 70 percent plus of those companies do not have any proper marketing processes or expertise. There are about 4 or 5 percent SMEs who actually want to reach out to us. This means that the need is very high in that space and the market is pretty huge. We are getting access to world class expertise, which is very difficult for SMEs to hire or build internally. The second is it gives them a very quick way to scale up. It gives them a way that is quick and efficient to scale up their operations without building a team or going through a learning curve of building a team. Subsequently, waiting for the team to deliver result. They have to go through a learning curves which is cut short if they have a outsourcing provider like us. And, the third one is that it keeps their costs variable and flexible. If they make investment from their own team then to that extend the costs become locked in. The services comes cheap. What really means it delivers them value for whatever they are paying us.

Indian SMEs are often faced with budgetary and managerial limitations as far as marketing operations are concerned. Are your services helpful and cost-effective for them?
Vinod Harith: It is how you define cost efficiency. The way we define cost efficiency is to make it outcome based which means that lot of our services are linked to the desired outcome of SMEs. This means large revenue growth. What are the biggest issues for SMEs today? They are faced with growth and they want to efficiently manage growth. That's what I am saying. The fundamental philosophy is that we have it in ourself, which is a outcome based. We are linked to outcome. What we have seen in the last four years that it is not that SMEs do not want to make investment but they are very clear that the investment has to be linked with the revenue growth. So, as far as the revenue growth is happening they do not mind to make any investment. So, what we are delivering to SMEs are, we are delivering business values to them, we find that they do not have any problem making investment.

What kind of planning you put into place before initiating marketing strategies for SMEs?
Vinod Harith: Helping them to achieve their revenue goals and to take their products and services to the markets. We not only plan the marketing strategies but also look after the execution. SMEs want to grow their revenue so they are looking for organization who can provide them both the strategy and the execution and help them achieve very tangible revenue growth. We think that marketing is more of a horizontal function. In the process level, it is more of a horizontal function. While, certain amount of domain expertise is required for strategy related areas of execution.

What kind of services are you providing?
Vinod Harith: Typically, what we offer for SMEs is a good market. A good market can be into two distinct areas, one is what we call is outsourced CMO office. The CMO office helps the organization to build the marketing leadership which is the planning, segmentation, creating marketing calenders, executing them, etc. So, it is a our play for providing them the marketing leadership and the execution. But it does not provide any intervention in sales. It is pure play marketing. The other service that we offer is that is called the go-to-market. The go-to-market is basically helping them to achieve very clear goals in terms of either revenue growth or in the form portfolio expansion.

For instance: Typically, the kind of services we offer is that most organisation comes to us and say that it has launched a new product. They want our help in taking it to the market. Else, they say like we have presence in the northern region but we want to expand to the south. We are helping them to go to the new markets. It is just like taking new products to the existing markets, and taking existing products to the new markets. These are the kind of services we are providing.

Are SMEs aware of the innovative ideas and outsourcing of marketing services? What are you doing to make them aware?
Vinod Harith: Now, the awareness is building up. Organizations are talking about it. We are doing some awareness section on this. So, slowly it is building up. Most importantly, I would say that the need is there among SMEs.

Could you highlight what kind of challenges SMEs usually face in their marketing functions?
Vinod Harith: There are always challenges because many SMEs are competing with same pace with the larger companies, where the larger companies have bigger brands and selling power. The marketing strategies for SMEs should revolve around for marketing, which will provide smarter ways for reaching the customers without spending big money. They are also creating the brand presence in the mind of the customers that can be achieved without the money mushroom that larger brands have. It is about building smarter marketing strategies that can counter challenges of large companies. SMEs do not have the brand nor the selling power. So, the marketing strategies have to be really smart.

(Namrata Kath Hazarika can be contacted at namratakh@tradeindia.com)