Best Of 5 SaaS Companies To Watch

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Best of VOL 03 ISSUE 06 2022

Workforce Management

Tips for Improving SaaS Software Implementation

5 Companies

To Watch

Validate Ideas

Best Practices in Start-up Product Management

Joe Mathew

Founder & CEO, Maple CRM

C R M FO R S M A L L B U S I N E S S

Editor’s Note SAAS: GIVING BUSINESSES A BREATH OF FRESH AIR

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RPANET (1969), or the early form of the internet, revolutionized the world we see today. The Internet gave birth to many business models, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, which is relatively recent but could not have existed without the world wide web.

A SaaS business is founded on three fundamental aspects. A software, cloud infrastructure, and internet or a web browser through which that software is operated. Businesses needing this software access it by paying a monthly rental.

SaaS companies combine an advanced user interface with excellently coded programs and develop software offered as products, services, or solutions.

What distinguishes these companies from traditional software companies is that their software is hosted exclusively in the cloud as products or services.

Abhishek Joshi Deputy Editor

abhishek.joshi@insightssuccess.com

It gives businesses access to its software without an end-user license key required to activate it. This is done by offering other companies a need-based membership pass. The active members or customers get full access just after logging in to their business accounts.

Due to this excellent benefit, SaaS is incredibly appealing as a business service model. Small, medium and even large enterprises wishing to keep their IT infrastructural investment to a minimum can leverage SaaS companies' products, services, and solutions.

These SaaS solutions save them IT costs and become an integral component of their business. For example, Zendesk is used by customer relationship departments, and Salesforce is used by companies’ sales team professionals. The SaaS companies further eliminate any risk for their members by taking a small membership fee.

After IT services, SaaS is fast emerging as the next best solution provider for local and global corporate entities. Insights Success’s latest edition finds out ‘Best Of 5 SaaS Companies to Watch!’

These SaaS companies provide their futuristic services for your businesses to minimize costs, maximize your profits, give a personalized experience to your endusers, and relieve you of your IT worries to concentrate on your core business expansion fully.

Have a wonderful reading!

C O V E R S T O R Y

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C R M FO R S M A L L B U S I N E S S

Harnessing the Full Might of Technology to Evolve Businesses

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22 C O N T E N T

7L International

AdSpyder

Weaving an Intelligent Web of Strategic Digital Marketing

EasyLeadz

The Easiest Way to Connect with Business Leads

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A r t i c l e 18 Workforce Management

Tips for Improving SaaS Software Implementation

28 Validate Ideas

Best Practices in Start-up Product Management

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Deputy Editor Abhishek Joshi Managing Editor Gaurav PR Wankhade

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Best of

5 Companies

To Watch

Company Name

Management

Brief

7L International

Vasileios Stoidis, President and CEO

7L International is a digital transformation consulting and custom software development firm that has been enabling more than 100 organizations around the world to evolve and thrive in the constantly shifting market reality.

AdSpyder

Gaurav Kumar, Founder and CEO

AdSpyder is among India's leading platforms for founders and other stakeholders on the entrepreneurial boat to share their invaluable knowledge, skill, and experiences.

Easyleadz

Nitin Bajaj, Founder and CEO

EasyLeadz helps business professionals establish a fast and genuine connection with their leads, contacts, and candidates.

Hubspot

Yamini Rangan, CEO

HubSpot’s CRM platform has all the tools and integrations you need for marketing, sales, content management, and customer service.

Maple CRM

Joe Mathew, Founder and CEO

Maple CRM enables business owners to meet changing business needs by attracting, engaging and delighting customers

C R M FO R S M A L L B U S I N E S S

Cover Story

CRM software of your choice would give you the valuable data to know your customers beyond the figures that they represent

Joe Mathew

Founder & CEO, Maple CRM

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aintaining customer relations, retaining customers, and attracting potential customers is the mantra of success for every business. This is a mammoth task if done manually, and the possibility of leaving broken strings is aplenty, which could affect the growth of your business. The advent of CRM came as a huge relief to companies. Technology could never have been so good for scaling businesses as it is now because of CRM. The customer relationship management (CRM) tool has rid companies of the cumbersome task of maintaining records and interactions manually.

CRM is the buzzword today, helping you get more leads, better closures, and personal interactions. Catching the pulse of the market, many CRM service providers plunged in to meet the growing demands from companies.

During our quest to feature some of the best SaaS companies, Maple CRM stood strikingly away from the crowd.

With its cloud-based CRM solutions, it has given a tough lead for its competitors. Headquartered in Bengaluru, India, the company tapped the clientele that needed CRM solutions but was not getting the desired service provider.

What Makes Maple CRM Different Maple CRM is a cloud-based Business and Customer Management Solution built exclusively for small and medium businesses. It is suitable for both product and service sector companies.

While most CRM solution providers targeted bigger companies, Maple chose to be different, realising the need of small and medium businesses. No wonder the company is trusted by 500+ customers in India and abroad.

Their sales and service solutions range empowers growing businesses to become more productive, efficient, and profitable. Maple CRM enables business owners to meet changing business needs by attracting, engaging,

Best of 5 Saas Companies to Watch

and delighting customers. Maple CRM can work as lead management software, quotation software, invoice software, workflow management software, task management software, AMC management software, or ticket management software, both on mobile and web, for every business.

The Dynamic Leader Mr Joe Mathew is a Solutions Architect and Product Manager with over 22 years of expertise in all stages of the technical product life cycle, including - business case development, product definition, product architecture/design, customer/sales support and product delivery. He completed his post-graduation from the University of Madras.

Mr Mathew worked as a software engineer at Accel Software Solution.

Later in 2002 he joined as Technical Specialist in NOKIA until 2012 and became Product Line Manager for the LTE-PCRF Product, NOKIA. He has vast face-to-face customer experience with a proven ability to work closely with them to understand and successfully address their requirements and issues. He possesses exceptional interpersonal skills enabling, building, and nurturing relationships with multiple stakeholders. He has strong international onsite experience working together with teams in US, Canada, UK, and APAC regions.

Urge to Serve All Mr Mathew says that modern business has made technology a great partner in its success and one of the most popular and sought-after partner is the CRM software. The customers are the asset and pathway to greater profitability for any business. He observes that many companies spend millions of dollars trying to get new customers while they could have spent a fraction of that cost retaining them.

“The main objective of the software is customer relationship management.

The automation of business processes is no longer just a luxury for larger businesses. Instead, it is rapidly becoming essential for companies of all sizes to ensure continuous success.

This thought gave me the strength to introduce Maple CRM. We make sure that we are updated day by day to ensure our clients' luxury feel. The ultimate goal of Maple is to introduce and implement business automation in small and medium businesses,” shares Mr Mathew.

Exceeding Expectations At the heart of every business is its customers. They can be considered their lifeline. When these relationships sour, businesses risk being left out or, worse, losing everything. That's where CRM comes into play. Maple focuses on having the best and top qualified people, and it ensures continuous updation of software by analysing the

We empower teams to build relationships more effectively and provide the best customer experience from evaluation to purchase

trends in business. This focus has helped Maple to exceed its clients’ expectations on every deal.

It doesn’t matter how big or small the business is, the customers are the ultimate asset of every business, and Maple will help your sales team to be in touch with every customer. So, you can have complete trust that every customer of yours is in your hand, and no one will drop out because of lack of attention.

The name of the game is efficiency, and this can never be achieved manually. Maple has all the possible features to automate the needs of small and medium businesses.

Conqureing Challenges It was in 2009 that the story of Maple CRM started. Back then, in India, Cloud meant just the cloud and the Cloud Applications were meaningful only to enterprise companies.

Maple CRM built the application mainly focusing on small and medium corporates and for those who understand the advantages of SaaS applications but are unable to migrate to one of them due to cost and complexity reasons.

Indian SMEs are facing some of these challenges in the adoption of a CRM even today, such as unfamiliar user interface, not being familiar with the CRM jargons, feature overload and not having good training from CRM providers.

However, Maple CRM tries its best to eliminate these basic challenges and makes it pleasing even to the entry level sales and service staff of every customer those who come onboard on their platform.

“We focused on developing the UI and application as simple as possible to make the life better for small companies and their sales folks. One of the biggest problems we faced then was that people aware of CRM

With rapid technology enablement, businesses of all sizes have access to easy-touse, affordable CRM software options today software were significantly less in number.

People know that manual data entry kills the valuable time of every business, but they were not ready to get out from their traditional system. They always try to stick to manual data entry because they believe in a myth that CRM implementation is costly. Yes, of course, CRM implementation is a little costly, but people don’t even think about long-term advantages,” says Mr Mathew.

Braving the Pandemic As with any other business, the pandemic also affected Maple, but its strong team was Mr Mathew’s strength. The company had a drastic drop in sales, but the team effectively managed and supported all the existing clients. The team never had work from home experience earlier, but they did not even skip a beat. They were dealing with software that did not even need any physical presence of the office. It only required a device to log in and efficient people to work with that.

“What makes me amazed is how fast my people got settled with the new work culture and how productive they

were even after a sudden change. They ensured all our deliverables to our clients were sharp and accurate even in that situation,” shares Mr Mathew.

On the sales part, even though Maple had a drastic drop in sales initially, the pandemic led to a significant jump in its business over the last few months.

During the pandemic, more people came to know about the necessity of automating their business, and that is what CRM Software is made for.

A Sound Advice For the young generation of entrepreneurs, Mr Mathew advises that first they need to be passionate about what they are doing. He adds that this is a piece of advice not only for entrepreneurs but for everyone.

“If you just scout around your surroundings, you could find a lot of people who know what to do but they don’t do what they really wanted to do.

Always nourish your passion with new ideas. Do your best at every job, don’t sleep on it. If your passion is true, you will find a way to make it happen,” emphasizes Mr Mathew.

Looking Ahead and Beyond Maple has been able to increase its turnover from year to year. The

The Dynamic Leader Mr Joe Mathew is Solutions Architect and Product Manager with over 22 years of expertise in all stages of the technical product life cycle, including - business case development, product definition, product architecture/design, customer/sales support and product delivery. He completed his post-graduation from University of Madras.

Mr Mathew worked as a software engineer at Accel Software Solution. Later in 2002 he joined as Technical Specialist in NOKIA until 2012 and became Product Line Manager for the LTE-PCRF Product, NOKIA. He has vast face-to-face customer experience with a proven ability to work closely with them to understand and successfully address their requirements and issues. He possesses exceptional interpersonal skills enabling, building, and nurturing relationships with multiple stakeholders. He has strong international onsite experience working together with teams in US, Canada, UK, and APAC regions.

CRM has changed the way of organizing and managing daily tasks or activities for every business.

Mr Mathew says that CRM will evolve even further and help businesses scale bigger heights

development of the last few years shows a clear picture that it is growing.

of making Maple an ultimate software solution for all small business needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic had both positive and negative effects on the company. Mr Mathew shares that they struggled a bit during the pandemic, but everything has been moving in the right direction for the last few months.

He recollects that 16 years back, CRM was a new subject for people. He says that even today, around 10-20% are using some form of business solutions, not knowing the advantages of CRM and how productive it could be for their business.

We are restlessly taking inputs for that and focusing more on the continuous updation of software. The ultimate goal of Maple is to become an evangelist making people aware of the advantages of CRM. We wish to make every small and medium business convert from its traditional method to the path of automation. We want small and medium businesses to reach out to Maple fearlessly and understand that it is not very expensive,” states Mr Mathew.

“Businesses are becoming bolder and more open to what technology can do for them. They are going online, and more people find ways to earn money, like an internet side income, and improve their operations with today’s technology. Now we are on a mission

Predictive View CRM software is one of the most rapidly developing technologies.

According to the laws of economics, it means there is demand for it. In the last couple of decades, the meaning of CRM changed to CRM Software.

Some years earlier, it was predominantly used by the large enterprises and was also limited to the basic functionality. Now the scope of CRM has increased from a mere customer database to a 360-degree view of customer interactions.

SAAS plays a very big role in increasing the number of users. The expensive CRM software became available as a service, affordable to almost everyone now. The internet revolution played a very big role. The availability of internet made accessibility of CRM Software very easy. Now, it has become one of the biggest productivity tools for sales and service teams.

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Tips for

Improving

SaaSSoftware Implementation

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Workforce Management

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he software has made life comfortable and efficient.

It is easier than ever before to find any information or product at the tip of your fingers through browsing. The software engines have made the task of communicating with people effortless and straightforward.

Businesses worldwide are continuously looking for new ways to improve their business operations and attract new customers. This will make their revenues escalate.

However, for businesses to develop internal software solutions is generally too expensive and time-consuming.

As a result, most of the victorious companies adopt SaaS Solutions designed to improve business operations.

Although software as a service solution renders all kinds of benefits, their implementation can be quite a challenge.

Adopting and integrating entirely new software is not easy.

The process can be hugely hefty, which have a lot of constructions and evaluations involved. Businesses must make sure that the implementation process is smooth, and it fits their needs and budget.

Here are some recommendations on how to get the most value from implementing SaaS Solutions into business operations.

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Pivot the Core Features SaaS companies offer many advanced features that can cause complications once implemented. The more features businesses want to adopt, the harder it becomes to implement each one appropriately.

That’s why businesses should give maximum attention to the core features. Non-essential features and functionalities will only complicate your SaaS implementation strategy. It will have a hard time for your team members in picking up everything; thus, the smaller, the better. New features can be adopted and implemented in the future with proper planning.

Spawn User Acceptance The statement ‘Implementation is not Acceptance’ holds very true. No matter how best the SaaS solutions are, the acceptance surrounds compliance. Businesses need to devise a proper strategy to achieve user acceptance. The more user-friendly the software is, the more efficiently the work is carried out.

Coordination between the Administration and SaaS Team It is essential that the implementation team is associated with the management.

The administration should regularly organize workshops for smooth interaction and cooperation. Not just should the software be swift, but also the entire process of SaaS implementation planning.

Choosing the right team for SaaS implementation Putting together a realistic team is necessary to achieve success. These teams help their colleagues to get acquainted with SaaS solutions. In larger companies’ extensive teams are required to introduce this new system to all users. This begins with the appointment of a Team Leader. The team members must be trained rightly to become experts in their business units. They should be able to answer questions pertaining to SaaS implementations. They should be able to conduct small training courses and the on-boarding of new employees.

It is crucial to connect the status quo to the goals in your plans and clearly document your progress, setbacks, and how this tool affects your overall business.

Continual Development and Optimization Once businesses have implemented the SaaS successfully and certain criteria are met, there is no time to loosen up and relax. SaaS tools require continuous maintenance in the form of monitoring and optimization. To give an instance, when software is implemented initially, you may realize that another solution fits better for your organization. Such a scenario is very common because the SaaS product landscape is very competitive, and fresh vendors appear all the time.

However, changing vendors is likely and a common practice during the first term of implementation and subscription years.

Scrutinize Disaster Recovery Solutions The application can undergo disaster in any form and at any time. Hence, organizations must have their disaster recovery resolutions in place. Such a system allows the application to be available to all customers even when undergoing a disaster. Also, in case of an outage, it is necessary to have a quick turnaround time for restoration as well.

Conclusion As mentioned above, many different considerations go into generating a good SaaS implementation strategy. A wellbuilt SaaS implementation facilitates an improved process, transparent communication, a work culture open to change, detailed preparations, and countless rehearsals. It also helps ventures to cut down their costs and increase productivity across teams. However, businesses need to keep managing and monitoring in order to ensure that their ventures are gaining all possible benefits.

It is important to note that SaaS solutions can help you improve your business operations, but only when appropriately constructed. The key focus should be on SaaS features first; only when the backbone is up and running should the extension of features be thought about.

Identifying the Outcome of Business Analyzing the new SaaS application’s impact on your enterprise during and after implementation is essential. It is a possibility that the benefits you were hoping for in your initial roll-out plan will not completely crystalize until later.

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- Shrutika Khedekar

Vasileios Stoidis President and CEO

Vasileios Stoidis was born in a small seaside town in North Greece. Since elementary school, he was drawn by technology and mechanisms trying to understand “how things work”. He worked at the local electronics-repair shop expanding his knowledge hands-on on electronics, telecommunications, and computers.

Studied Electronics and Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete in Greece, while setting up his first start-ups in the areas of Wi-Fi installation and management for hotels and e-mail and web hosting services.

In 2008, he started doing business in the United States and later he moved to New York. Today, he is the President and C.E.O. of 7L International Inc and MassiveGRID Inc. Vasileios Stoidis is drawn from the abilities that technology offers to the people and how the proper use of them increases and enhances people’s abilities.

Best Of 5 SaaS Companies To Watch

7L International Harnessing the Full Might of Technology to Evolve Businesses

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he technology sector was initially founded on marvellous ideas such as semiconductors, computing hardware, and communication devices. The advent of software businesses broadened the definition of technology to encompass everything that involves coding. Soon, more space was required to accommodate the influx of Internet companies that occurred during the Internet boom.

Some of these Internet firms were simply media and content enterprises that utilised code as their medium, while others were pioneering rich features like e-commerce, social networking, the sharing economy, and even cloud computing. Thanks to the ease of the internet, business is booming more than ever.

But what about the companies and businesses that are struggling to adjust to this new market reality? With the old brick-and-mortar fashion of businesses finally showing its limitations, businesses need to adapt in order to flourish in the digital era.

Fortunately, firms like 7L International are championing the cause of digital transformation, consultation and digital adaptation to help businesses and organisations find their teeth in the future.

Currently led by its dynamic President and CEO – Vasileios M. Stoidis, 7L

International is a digital transformation consulting and custom software development firm that has been enabling renowned companies and reputable organizations to evolve and adapt to the new market reality. 7L International provides fully integrated, end-to-end business solutions that are specifically tailored to each customer.

We are honoured to bring to you an exclusive interview we conducted with Mr Stoidis where we gathered deep insights and inspiration about the growth of 7L International in the everevolving tech sphere.

So, without further ado, let us dive right into the interview and relish the knowledge we are about to receive.

Kindly describe us about 7L International in detail.

7L International was founded in 2007.

With offices in New York, London, and Athens, 7L International leverages deep technology knowledge and unparalleled software engineering expertise to ensure digital transformation maturity across countless industries, globally. Our company provides tailor-made technology solutions to enable businesses to reach untapped areas of growth. We help organizations face challenges in the areas of growth, performance improvement and costcutting by utilizing the right technology.

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7L International leverages deep technology knowledge and unparalleled software engineering expertise to ensure digital transformation maturity across countless industries, globally.

The approach of 7L International is unique in the market. Instead of having specific products to try to persuade the clients to use, we operate based on a methodology similar to the Socratic – maieutic – method. According to this methodology, we deploy a phased approach where we initially assess the technology readiness level of a company and the needs and challenges this company faces. As a second step, we match the most suitable technologies that will work best for the company. Finally, we implement these technologies by integrating what is readily available and building what’s not available in the market.

Thanks to our client-centric methodology, we make sure to provide solutions that adapt and work based on the clients’ current and future needs.

This is the success 7L International provides to its business clients.

What made you venture into the industry you are catering to?

In my opinion, Technology is not an industry. Technology is the tool, the catalyst for all the other industries. The fact, that technology enhances our abilities and enables people, groups, companies, and societies to overcome limitations, obstacles, face challenges and expand their capabilities, their competence, and intelligence is what makes me passionate about the Technology “industry”.

What kind of offerings do you provide to your clients?

Web Applications and Mobile Applications development, eCommerce development, Software Modernization, Software Defined Mainframes, IoT development and integrations, Secure Communications and Secure Storage Systems, Quality Assurance Services, and Specification Design.

What kind of challenges have you faced while entering into the industry you are catering to?

I can’t say that I have faced challenges in the Technology industry. I could say that the challenges I have faced have to do with corporate growth.

Companies as they grow, need to change and adapt to new challenges.

Change management, corporate changes and culture changes are the biggest challenges.

A C.E.O. needs to have many talents and understand all the aspects of the business. As the business grows, you need to re-learn all the aspects of the business in a way that it’s suitable for

the stage the business is and for the stage, the business is heading to. This is challenging.

How was your firm/business affected in these pandemic times and what were the steps taken by you to curb the damages all the while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?

Many business areas were affected by lockdowns and many investments were blocked. However, being a remotework-friendly employer made us adapt to this unprecedented situation very fast without any interruptions in our operations and projects.

Throughout this time, we continued to provide our high level of services, seamlessly and at the same time, we enabled our clients to expedite their business transformation utilizing technology.

The positive angle is that many businesses have realized the importance of digital transformation which paved the way for new projects for technology companies.

We took advantage of this opportunity and plan to expand even more in the future as we march towards normality.

What would you like to advise the young generation of entrepreneurs?

It’s important to be able to understand the fundamentals in our business and also in society. It’s also crucial to understand the dynamics of the same sectors. Educating ourselves in these two directions gives us the right perspective on challenges we face and the right direction we need to navigate in the future.

We mustn’t forget to evaluate risks and proceed reluctantly at first but to stay focused on our vision. An entrepreneur should be passionate and try to 24 | March 2022 | www.insightssuccess.in

differentiate amongst others. Gain expertise in their domain and keep improving. Seek guidance from individuals who are considered successful in their area of expertise.

Where do you envision your firm/business to be in the long run and what are your future goals?

How do you plan to embrace the changes happening in your respective industry?

I envision 7L International to be able to produce open standards, models, and frameworks to help accelerate the development of reliable, secure, and adaptable software similar to the way the Internet is built on open protocols (OSI model).

We plan to grow by constantly improving our operations and assisting in the digital transformation of many industries.

We try to add increasing value to our services and deliver an advantageous experience to our clients by constantly enhancing our products. This gives us a competitive advantage.

What is the current industrial scenario of the industry you are catering to?

Now more than ever, technologies spread widely in most industries, as the need for innovation and automation is compelling for the businesses that wish to remain competitive.

The U.S. is amongst the leaders of the innovation world. Only countries which are aligned with digital transformation can lead the global market capitalization. This trend emerges many opportunities for technological companies.

Digital technologies determine the economic performance in a rapidly changing business environment which provides room for investments and financial growth.

Weaving an Intelligent Web of Strategic Digital Marketing

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oday, digital marketing is the key to a business’s success. But digital marketing in itself is a tricky business. If not done correctly, it will not yield the expected result.

A gap gets created of what has been expected from running a haphazard digital marketing campaign and the final outcome, which in the long run ruins the company to its failure.

An IITian of Kharagpur from the 2017 batch, Gaurav Kumar’s experience of working at an eCommerce brand helped him identify such gaps that both brands and agencies feel while running ads - which is why he created a platform to automate all aspects involved in digital marketing campaigns. Kumar, the founder & CEO of AdSpyder, thus began his entrepreneurial journey to bridge that gap.

In an interview with Insights Success for its edition of ‘Best Of 5 SaaS Companies To Watch’, Kumar tells us how AdSpyder is thriving towards helping businesses across various industries craft a smart network of tactical digital advertisements that fosters their aim of continuous growth and development.

The excerpts of that interview are given below.

Describe AdSpyder in detail.

AdSpyder is a SAAS-based ad intelligence platform that provides insights into millions of online advertisements from all over the world. The platform covers multiple advertisement metrics, generates visualisations based on those metrics, and offers several filters for a hassle-free user experience.

AdSpyder currently supports Google Search ads, Facebook

ads, Google Ecom ads, Bing ads, Ecomm Ads from Flipkart, Amazon in total. At present, AdSpyder supports 11 platforms to showcase ads from. The portal has a ten million+ ad copy library and covers ads from 50,000+ websites and 100+ sources.

AdSpyder provides advertisement-related data that matters the most. And it is not about just analytics; AdSpyder ensures you have the necessary metrics and numbers in hand to craft the best advertising strategies.

What made you venture into the industry you are catering to?

My experience of working in the eCommerce field has provided me not just an overview but an in-depth understanding of possible requirements required to bridge the gap between the product and the marketing. During my work on different eCommerce websites, I have seen many potential products failing to make an impact in the market due to improper marketing strategies.

This provided me with an opportunity to create AdSpyder, a tool that helps you monitor ad insights of top-performing competitors in the market.

What kind of offerings do you provide to your clients?

AdSpyder is a service that provides over 100 million ads with keyword searching, competitor analysis and campaign details. The user can sort the library by date or location to find what they need most conveniently for their business needs and scale up their ROI. What kind of challenges have you faced while entering the industry you are catering to?

Ads are not just regular posts that have been shared by the brand. Ads are entirely different sets of creative that are not

Best Of 5 SaaS Companies To Watch!

available on your social profile. The accurate date on ads being run is very important. The data needs to be up to date with the current promotion of the brands as well as data must be available for the user based on the keywords.

Researching and collecting such data has been one of the crucial challenges I faced and overcame.

How was AdSpyder affected in these pandemic times, and what were the steps you took to curb the damages while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?

Our business was not much affected by the pandemic. During the pandemic, eCommerce saw a rise in the graph, with most companies taking the digital route to sell their products. This also increased the competition for most of the sectors. And the solution to this was an online tool that provides competitor ad insights.

We started identifying industries that are going to get benefitted from the pandemic, and we started putting a lot of focus on that only.

What would you like to advise the young generation of entrepreneurs?

Focus! This is one mistake I believe is the reason for the closure of many start-ups. Every founder should have a clear cut focus on their KPI, putting revenue on top and work in that direction only.

If you are focused on serving the right customer, everything will fall in place.

Where do you envision AdSpyder to be in the long run, and what are your future goals? How do you plan to embrace the changes happening in your respective industry?

We want to scale our business to $1MN ARR by next year.

We want to build a company that cares about its employees.

I genuinely believe that if you love your employees, your customers will love you too.

“

AdSpyder ensures you have the necessary metrics and numbers in hand to craft the best advertising strategies

“

Therefore, the impact of the pandemic on AdSpyder has been very minimal, gaining maximum users from sectors like EdTech and healthcare who used our platform to run ads on the scale.

Gaurav Kumar

Founder & CEO

Change is inevitable, and we are always prepared for that.

Though we don’t keep an eye on competitors, we challenge ourselves to build a better product to make our customers happier.

What is the current industrial scenario of the industry you are catering to?

As per US Census Bureau, total e-commerce sales for 2021 were estimated at $870.8 billion, an increase of 14.2 per cent. This shows that maximum sellers are moving to digital space. There are several factors to consider. Strong ad spending growth is expected to continue in 2022. The U.S. ad market is forecasted to exceed $300 billion and the global ad market over $700 billion. This will bring in more competition in eCommerce and digital selling. As a result, this brings out more opportunities and possibilities for AdSpyder to grow.

Best Practices in Product Management

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Validate Ideas

“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.”

– Deep Nishar, Vice President of Product at LinkedIn

F

or any company, creating high-quality products is the priority. Therefore, having a product manager is a necessity. Product managers have been in practice for ages. But the term product manager or product management has been used for not more than 20 years.

As the quote suggests, product managers must put on multiple shoes while creating a product. While doing so, a series of steps should be followed to deliver the finest of products.

In start-up companies, change is the only constant. Hence, a product manager should be adaptable to change. Being a part of a start-up company, risk-taking could be seen as resolute. It is a great way to experiment with products.

Attitude is as important as soft skills. A product manager's mindset must be conventional yet growing. Their mindsets should be driven and curious to commence product creation.

Questions every product manager should ask themself before working on a product.

1.

What problem am I trying to fix?

2.

How do I know if it is successful?

3.

How do I want people to react to my ideas?

4.

Have I considered all elements?

A product manager must follow a cycle to create a product.

This cycle consists of various stages and steps.

Outlining and Planning Planning is the dominant step of all. This step, like others, cannot be skipped. Planning is more important than it seems. It is also important to know your team members and their strengths and weaknesses. Manage people before you manage the product.

It is incredibly important to know the user's needs beforehand. Gathering information about the resources and

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ensuring their availability is crucial. A thoroughly optimized product manager could increase company gains by 34.2%.

The next step is to check user interaction and gather feedback. Give your products to the users and inspect how they interact. While doing that, find possible improvements and implement changes.

Validate Ideas Fully accurate research is a must. When it comes to ideas, research and brainstorming should be done with the assistance of team members.

If enough time is spent on validating and authenticating ideas, a significant amount of time will be saved in the future. This step will help you shape the plan in such a way as to avoid misunderstandings amongst the team members later.

Make sure that the idea is not already implemented. The foremost step is to recognize the problem that needs to be solved.

Strategizing Strategy determines the steps of the plan to achieve the goal. Take all crucial points into consideration before execution. A product roadmap is significant in communicating how short-term efforts match long-term business goals. Product roadmap should include business goals and purposes, product areas and features, key performance indicators (KPIs), and a sequence of priorities.

Make your top customers the first source of improvements.

As Bill Gates said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

After testing, try finding possible ways to improve your product. Be a sceptic and ask questions. Think of the ways that could enhance the product.

Things every product manager should focus on: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Evaluating the magnitude of the target market.

Each step should have a purpose.

Exploring your competitor's weaknesses.

Paying attention to the user's needs and desires.

Thinking of ways to scale your product.

Minimize costs.

Create questions to authenticate your hypothesis.

Making sure everyone is on the same page.

Some useful tools to consider in product management are: 1.

monday.com - This tool helps you plan your roadmaps visually and make sure everyone is aligned. prodpad.com - This software helps product managers to develop strategies, feedback, and product roadmaps. craft.io - This tool helps one understand customer needs, clarify decisions and build transparency.

Plan Execution and Project Creation

2.

While executing, focus on the steps of planning and the value of the product. Your product should match the customer's needs. It should be designed in such a way to aid them in some way or another.

3.

Once the minimum viable product (MVP) is created, feel open to leap to the next curve.

In start-up companies, a product manager has less to lose and much more to experiment with. In most cases, risktaking is encouraged. Change and innovation are received with leadership.

Testing and Feedback Assembling - Sonali Dhiwar When the MVP is released, it is time to establish a customer feedback mechanism. 21% of products fail to fulfil customers' needs. Therefore, a company must focus on what the user wants.

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The Easiest Way to Connect with Business Leads

F

inding a deal earlier was a hurricane task. Finding leads was a dream of most of the salesman. Similarly, recruiters are in search of finding the best fit for their corporation, i.e., finding a lead to hire.

Finding a great and excellent talent to add to the company’s success is not an easy task. Before the digital era, recruiters could be seen cold calling and source hunting for days, weeks, months, and even years to find great talent pool.

But with an advent of technology and its advancement recruiters are at peace.

Adding to this peace EasyLeadz introduced a great app named Mr. E, a first-of-its-kind B2B Business Contact providing platform. This exceptional app combines the power of human intelligence with machine learning to deliver highly accurate, big, great, and dream leads to you with just a click.

How easy, you might say! And you are right. It is that easy as the innovator claims that finding a contact number is no more a challenge. It is as sorted as dialing a number from your phone. All

you need is the pre-installed Mr. E from EasyLeadZ – a New Delhi-based company founded in 2016.

We know, you are very curious to know more about this company and its creator.

So, let us find out more about this company, without further ado, from its inventor Mr. Nitin Bajaj, Founder and CEO, in an exclusive interview, with Insights Success.

Please describe us about EasyLeadz in detail.

Mr. E by EasyLeadz is helping sales professionals, B2B marketers, recruiters to connect with their potential customers over phone calls and scale their revenue. It is the easiest way to find B2B contact numbers with just one click. You can enrich any business profile with direct mobile numbers, which we call direct dials.

What made you venture into the industry you are catering to?

I have always been a salesperson, and the biggest challenge I faced was to 32 | March 2022 | www.insightssuccess.in

find high-quality leads. We tried to solve that problem for myself and other sales professionals, and India was lacking in good sales self-serve products, so we found a gap there.

What kind of offerings do you provide to your clients?

EasyLeadz helps business professionals establish a fast and genuine connection with their leads, contacts, and candidates.

B2B engagement is based on trust. We help you build that trust using simple tools that allow you to enrich and verify business profiles. Today, over 70,000 sales representatives, recruitment managers, and marketers transform how they engage with their leads, contacts, and candidates using Mr. E daily.

We are compatible with LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Zaubacorp, Tofler, Instafinancial and works on all websites. Our customers range from small and medium businesses to enterprises, including AUDI, UBER, Amazon, Salesforce, Upgrad,

Best Of 5 SaaS Companies To Watch!

An Innovator and Inventor Nitin Bajaj, the Founder, and the CEO at EasyLeadz, is currently scaling EasyLeadz and helping with new products launching, Brand building, Growth Marketing, Digital Marketing, Strategic Partnerships, and more.

He started GetMyLooks in 2013 and grew it up to 100 orders a day.

Then he started Sponsifyme in 2015 where he managed a team of 10 and served over 100 clients, including Pepsico, Zee Cinemas, OYO Rooms, Rio Olympics, IIFA Awards.

Nitin Bajaj

Founder and CEO

Later he founded EasyLeadz in 2016.

He was also the Country Head for F6S from 2017 to 2018. It is a global community of over three million+ startup founders, VC firms and Accelerators globally.

“

We aspire to be in the resume of every sales/marketin g professional as a SKILL set

“

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Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group, AT Kearney, and many more.

What kind of challenges have you faced while entering into the industry you are catering?

We created various products. Many of them were too early for the market, and a lot of them could not pick up.

Eventually, we were successful with Mr. E contact finder tool.

Creating a high-quality product that mines databases every day and updates them in real-time was a challenge in itself. Especially in India, where digital information is still at a nascent stage, mining information scattered across and making sense of it was a daunting task.

How was EasyLeadz affected in these pandemic times, and what were the steps you took to curb the damages while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?

We actually were lucky enough and COVID-19 has been a boon for us. As

most companies struggled with sales during the pandemic, they relied on tools like EasyLeadz to grow their connectivity with decision-makers and potential customers. Thus, we grew ten times during the pandemic.

In fact, we launched our tool just three months before the pandemic hit, and since then, we have over 71,000 business users across the world using our contact finder tool.

What would you like to advise the young generation of entrepreneurs?

Be patient. Bootstrap as long as you can. Try and create a highly differentiated product, and you will grow insanely afterward.

Where do you envision EasyLeadz to be in the long run, and what are your future goals? How do you plan to embrace the changes happening in your respective industry?

We aspire to be in the resume of every sales/marketing professional as a SKILL set. Like people say they know how to use Microsoft office, we aspire 34 | March 2022 | www.insightssuccess.in

that all sales professionals will write that they know how to use Mr. E tool.

B2B databases are a dynamic industry.

We have to keep developing tools that can mine and provide more structured information across people and companies every day.

Our core strength is technology, and we always have used that as an advantage over other players in this industry.

What is the current industrial scenario of the industry you are catering?

Recently our competitor Lusha became a Unicorn. Another competitor got listed on stock exchange Zoominfo, having a valuation of more than 20 billion USD. So, the industry is growing, and sales is a challenge for every business. Thus, the market potential is still unserved.