We have field force of more than 50 million in India spread across variety of industry verticals. Majority of this workforce is not necessarily comfortable using computer but are very conversant with Mobiles and tablets. So the only realistic way India’s enterprises are going to automate their entire operations is by automating this workforce using mobile devices. Legacy way of doing this was using a PDA but with advent of Android devices at extremely attractive costs, you do not need to buy clunky PDAs anymore.
As a true software as a service product, Bizom comes with a published pricing starting at Rs 500 per user per month.But most of the time, our customer’s loaded upfront cost goes much beyond it. And this presents a huge barrier to entry for enterprises and SMEs to use Mobile as an automation device.
For example here is how the calculation works for an enterprise with 1000 field users depending on their network or device choice.
| Network | EDGE | EDGE | 3G | 3G |
| Device | Nokia Java feature phone(Like Asha 302) | Android Phone | Android Phone | Android Tablet |
| Number of Users | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 |
| Bizom Plan Price per month per user(Rs) | 750 | 750 | 750 | 750 |
| Data plan cost per month per user(Rs) | 99 | 99 | 299 | 299 |
| Device cost(Rs) | 3500 | 7000 | 7000 | 15000 |
| Total monthly cost | 849000 | 849000 | 1049000 | 1049000 |
| Total one time cost | 3500000 | 7000000 | 7000000 | 15000000 |
| Total loaded cost for starting | 43,49,000 | 78,49,000 | 80,49,000 | 1,60,49,000 |
| Device cost as % of one time cost for decision making | 80.48 | 89.18 | 86.97 | 93.46 |
Imagine spending 1.6 cr on devices to just try out automation !!
I know the obvious answer is BYOD (Bring your own device).
Why don’t we build software that just works on every phone that a field executive carries.
Here is a sample list of mobile phones executives carry.(This is for one of our existing customers ..)
- Rage RQ 101
- Nokia 603
- Samsung Wave 505
- Samsung GTE 1200T
- Spice SEB 05
- Nokia 2700
- Nokia X2
- Micromax Q22
And so on ..
Notice the diversity of devices and operating system .. some of them cannot run downloadable applications. Most of them offer extremely poor user experience.
So, in short you cannot deploy a sustainable automation on the existing devices of executives unless they carry at least a smartphone/tablet. And in India, we are a few years away from that happening.
So what can a company like us do to reduce loaded upfront costs for their customers?
Here are few things one can do
Offer devices on easy monthly installments
This is usually an instant hit with customers. If you can offer devices on easy monthly installments, and reduce upfront costs, customers lap it up.
But it obviously has a flip side, your organisational risk is great.You do need big pockets to service a large customer with 100s of users.
What we do, is to offer these devices with some returnable deposit which reduces upfront risks for both us and the customers !!
Company schemes
Our customers use variety of schemes to ensure RoI from the devices themselves
Company will provide a free handset to an employee only
1. If an employee stays with the company for 1 year
2. Employee meets her targets on ongoing basis.
3. Employee bears partial costs (Lot of the enterprises keep owning a motorbike as a mandatory requirement for a field job, thankfully smartphones are much cheaper …:-))
In Summary, buying mobile devices can be a huge barrier for enterprise/SME customers who want to benefit from try before you buy facility offered by Software as a service companies such as ours but thanks-fully we believe that there are workarounds.
What’s your opinion?
[Guest post by Lalit Bhise, founder and CEO of Mobisy, an Enterprise mobility company.]
