The company is contributing a great deal in terms of saving time and money wherein no travel is involved and all can be done now at a click of a button. Vrinda Oberai connected with Vishal Purohit, CEO and Founder of Wooqer, to learn more about the company’s initiatives and areas of specialisation.
Vrinda Oberai (VO): Which are the services you specialise in? What is your company's USP?
Vishal Purohit (VP): Wooqer offers subscription to the Wooqer platform, analytics (operations and marketing) and support to customers in the retail businesses. Users (customer members) leverage the do- it-yourself nature of the platform to create audits, appraisals, checklists, data collection sheets, feedback surveys, and information packs (training) and track their usage/performance in real time. The ability to create, assign, launch and track without technical skills and the ecosystem (structure/ grouping/interaction) make Wooqer unique.
VO: Who is your target customer (like apparel brands, food brands, etc)?
VP: All retail business and other businesses that have a geographically dispersed operation and there is a need to share/collect information easily. Within retail, all apparel, automotive, luxury, electronics, GSR service networks (financial services, medical, pharmacy, etc) make up for the wide retail space that Wooqer is targeting.
VO: Can you share a recent example when you provided a particular service and it helped the retailer in a great way to overcome its shortcomings?
VP: Wooqer is not a mere service provider. Just like a cell phone company sets up the telephony infrastructure using which any individual can derive any value based on the calls made or received by them, Wooqer sets up the Tuto infrastructure using which individuals within a corporate can build solutions that they find meaningful. A couple of examples of use cases that all retailers utilising the platform are deriving value from, include Visual Merchandising Management – roll out, implementation monitoring, training and operations management including DSRs, manual bills, petty cash management,
stock counts, audits, appraisals, SOP implementation and many more.
VO: How do you ensure reaching out to the large chunk of customers who can be your target audience in the best possible way?
VP: Wooqer does have significant online presence in the form of retail.wooqer.com, tuto.wooqer.com and others. We reach out to prospects and guide them to our online presence. Wooqer is mentioned in business-to-business setting. Customer referrals, movements of customer power users from one organisation to another; active calls and word of mouth are a few ways via which Wooqer reaches out to the prospects.
VO: How have you witnessed the brands' demands undergo a shift when you started in 2009 to now in 2012? What have you added in your offerings accordingly?
VP: There is always room for accommodating what can help customers D-I-Y (Do-It-Yourself). An enhanced notification framework, ability to set up and work off milestones and extending coverage units are some of the things we already include in the response to customer needs. We understand what they are trying to achieve, rethink in the Wooqer way and include them in larger interest of all customers.
A customer’s perspective (on training managers):
Name of the organisation: Planet Retail
Name of the Spokesperson: Binoli Patil
Wooqer’s Tuto platform makes it really easy for training managers to deliver all kinds of rich, interactive training programmes to corporate employees, store staff as well as partner staff at the click of a button. “The ability to monitor time spent by trainee on reviewing training material, progress, performance, conduct online tests, capture feedback and attendance on the training, all in one place is what I really like about the platform,” said Binoli Patil, Training Manager at Planet Retail.
Where most e-learning initiatives are unable to succeed because of inability to create enough pull for trainees to log on to complete trainings, Tuto has gone and made learning a part of everyday life by bringing it on a platform which is being used for daily operational activities of users.
As this learning culture is building across organisations, an ‘Effort Shift’ is happening across organisations with ‘Training Manager’ profiles changing from ‘Training delivery people’ to great ‘content creators’ organisation.
