Smarter route to scale up!
Smarter route to scale up!

Offering a couple of products and associated services for Indian retail brands, V Rama Kumar, CEO, Tarang Software, unveils some interesting facts about retail payment solutions; information that tops the wish-list of the retailers.  


Sharmila Das (SD): What are the cost effective technologies that Indian retail business enterprises can use to scale up the business growth? Tell us the benefits of employing this technology? 
V Rama Kumar (VRK):
Tarang has a couple of products and associated services for Indian retail brands. WayFinder is an Online Market Research (OMR) and analysis tool for retail brands. Typical usage would be brand tracking, exit interviews, in-depth interviews and store audits, which would be conducted online. Online surveys are faster, cheaper and more accurate. With 100 million internet users in India, today, much larger samples would get surveyed resulting in better tracking of the brand and user perceptions.

Another area wherein the technology solutions come in handy is retail payments. POS transactions were introduced 20 years ago. The newer forms of payment are contact-less payments and mobile payments. Consumers can also pay for purchases through Near Field Communication (NFC) phones. Nokia manufactures NFC phones with an RFID chip. When this phone is waved near a contact-less reader such as the Vivo Tech reader, a payment-transaction gets completed with the help of virtual visa card on your phone.  

Tarang also offers a product called Mall Mate for retail. Mall Mate focuses on the POP at any store. Using a combination of bluetooth technology and customer data base, Mall Mate directs a targeted mobile advertisement about any special offer from the store owner in a mall. A consumer is given an incentive on a purchase from the mobile phone. The consumer can collect the goods and the bill from a special counter, present for such mobile purchases, at the store. 

SD: Does Tarang also provide training facilities? What support do you provide post the installation? 
VRK:
Tarang imparts training through its e-learning division. It offers a web-based training program, which the retail employees can access using a browser. The training extensively uses multi-media. The application of the training is ensured through scenarios and case-studies. Participants are evaluated for what they have imbibed through quizzes and assessment, at the end. 

After installation, Tarang offers an Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC).This contract ensures continuous support for the whole year on the product supplied. Any defects noticed are remedied under this contract. Any new versions of the product are supplied under this contract provided they are not major releases. The AMC is insurance to the retail customer, which ensures trouble-free performance of the product supplied. 

SD: What challenges or problems can a retail face in running these technologies?  
VRK:
One of the challenges lies in customer’s acceptance to the solution as a benefit and not a nuisance. If targeted mobile advertisement is used to generate relevant advertisements to the customer based on their profile, then it is a boon. If it results in spam advertising then users will avoid its usage.  

The actual working of the technology can also impose some challenges. The accuracy of e-mail addresses needed for the online survey must be 95 per cent, failing which the responses could become questionable. New technologies tend to have bugs/defects in them. To overcome these, extensive testing is recommended before deployment.  

SD: How is the response of the Indian retailers in implementing this technology for their operations? 
VRK:
The response to our OMR solution WayFinder from the FMCG companies and brand owners is very positive. Online Market Research (OMR) share, in the US, is around 45 per cent and growing at a rate exceeding 20 per cent. In India, Online MR is yet to catch up. However, brand owners are excited about OMR since its benefits are huge. The retail market in India is set for a huge growth and expansion.
 

Stay on top – Get the daily news from Indian Retailer in your inbox
Also Worth Reading