As Sri Lanka navigates the path to recovery post-Cyclone Ditwah with growth forecasts tempered, the Government and private sector anticipate signs of growth and progress. One such urgent need is an increase in FDIs; opportunities for Sri Lanka to demonstrate its prowess in offering services and establishing itself as a digital hub within the region. 

Salesforce, a global leader in CRM, AI analytics and collaboration software, in January announced its launch of a startup programme in Sri Lanka, with its eye on the country’s budding startup ecosystem.

While more commonly associated with large scale corporates, its platform is designed to be accessible, also commanding a significant presence among start-ups across the world through solutions such as Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft and Heroku. In its bid to enable organisations of varying scales to make data-driven decisions to build stronger relationships, the platform has also enabled Governments to digitise services for citizens. To better understand the incentive behind the Salesforce Startup Programme – Sri Lanka, and its ongoing work with Sri Lankan corporates, The Daily Morning Business spoke to Salesforce Senior Director Sridhar Hariharasubramanian. 

Below are excerpts from the interview, on the sidelines of its media briefing held in Colombo:

In the immediate term, Sri Lanka is on the path of recovering from the economic impact of cyclone Ditwah. Does Salesforce CRM and AI have a role to play in this?

Fundamentally, we are a large enterprise software company. We are essentially a B2B company, so we sell to various businesses and enterprises of all types. It’s not like we only cater to large banks or automated companies. We have customers all across the world who are as small as five- to 10-person teams. There are ways and means for a small company to acquire Salesforce software licences and use them for whatever purpose they intend.

We are also a fairly broad software platform, addressing different needs. Fundamentally, of course, we are a CRM company; we are in the business of managing customer relationships for our customers, whoever they may be; whether you are a bank, a retail company, or a financial services company. But that is not the only thing. We also have automation tools, analytics tools, and collaboration software such as Slack. There are various other things that you can buy from Salesforce and apply in any context that the customer may want to use it.

It’s sort of an open platform in that sense. We also are increasingly working with Governments around the world, including India. We work with Governmental agencies to deliver citizen services, and so on. On the post-crisis recovery side, if a Government wants to build software applications and invest in technology to empower and provide better services to its citizens, this software can be used for that as well.

What such collaborations with Governments would you point to as successes in leveraging Salesforce’s products?

The Government of India used our business intelligence and analytics platform Tableau to publish Covid cases and dashboards. The number of cases, how were they trending; are they increasing, declining? Which region within each state has the higher prevalence of cases? A lot of data was being collected in health centres around the state, but there was no one uniform single view of what that looked like, in terms of the ground reality.

Analytics is a great way to understand what’s happening on the ground. Raw data alone might not convey much but seeing it within context tells a real story, and it empowers better decision-making.

What potential do you see in Sri Lanka’s export segment, which is seeing a concerted effort to steer reliance away from commodities, into segments such as ICT/BPM and other service-related exports?

I think there is already an established reliance on services. Yes, there are those traditional exports like you mentioned, but for me as an outsider, this looks like a service-driven economy. I live in Bangalore, Karnataka. Our neighbouring state Kerala, is a service-driven economy. They rely on tourism and an influx of repatriation coming in from people living and working in the Middle East, so on and so forth. What is happening around the world is the knowledge economy is becoming more and more prevalent, where a lot of things are becoming digital, consumers are becoming digital. We all have smartphones in our hands, access to a lot of these applications, our behaviours are becoming more and more digital.

Even if you look at the simple act of shopping, the initial research, drawing inspiration on what kind of product or service to buy is not done at a mall or a storefront. One might typically do their research online, evaluate the different prices and specifications of a product. So, consumers have a lot of information on hand with them before they set foot into a store.

Therefore, for enterprises and brands to be successful, they need to tap into this. They need to understand what consumers are looking for, what comparisons they are making. When they are searching for things; Is my brand appearing in those results? How am I going to acquire a customer? The cost of acquisition for a customer has become a big problem. You can spend a lot on digital marketing and other things, but you may not get the necessary return.

That is where Salesforce can help in ensuring that your marketing funds are being used efficiently and effectively. Acquiring customers to nurture their relationship with them, converting them from a casual browser to a shopper or a buyer, and continuing that journey of nurturing that relationship with them, can make them a lifelong customer. That is where Salesforce really stands out. We provide an entire slew of products and technology offerings, to facilitate that customer journey.

This sort of assurance helps brands need not be constantly worried about other threats in the market, because your focus is really on the customer, serving their needs. This is an example of a retailer, but this can be applied to a bank, a telco company, even in education.

With your experience working with Sri Lankan corporates that have long relied on legacy IT systems, and SMEs having relatively low digital maturity, how would you see the experiences you’ve acquired in other markets being applied here?

We’ve worked with many emerging economies around the world, even India is still pretty much considered as an emerging economy. These tools are implemented in parts of Latin America, parts of South Asia. What we see in Sri Lanka is that its appetite for investment might not be very high. You may have limited resources for investment and the digital maturity may not be on par with certain parts of the world. However, we are seeing this changing, worldover. Slowly but steadily, companies are now realising that not adopting digital technology can be a death to them. 

You can only go so far without using technology in your day-to-day operations. It’s okay to start small, hone in on one specific business problem, understand the implications of the problem; especially if it is the cause behind losing customers. Facilitating better technology to rank and file employees can help make better decisions, so on and so forth, can help solve the problems. Customers are a life long business, whether you’re big or small. Starting out small, and seeing it through can help see benefits, and one may even increase their investments and complexity of what they may do as a business to maintain customer relationships, overtime.

Starting with something as simple as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system; collecting information, consolidating information already on hand, bringing them together to have a more systematic way of communicating with customers, understanding the insights they may share, behaviour, these can be done one step at a time, gradually.