We understand that Zoho provides excellent solutions specific to the size and type of enterprises and is growing exponentially in the region. Can you explain your strength?

You are right! We offer the right kinds of solutions that enterprises need. We consider SMBs or SMEs are the sweet spots to do business with, as there is an enormous need for the right solutions.

Zoho helped over 2500 SMEs in the region with digital transformation and enterprise resources planning (ERP) in a year besides acquiring over 500,000 customers across the globe. We are growing exponentially here and opened more than seven officers in the Middle East and Africa region.

Prem Anand, Head of Business Solutions – MEA, Zoho

We have developed 50+ applications and enterprises can use them for sales, marketing, talent acquisition, project management, and more – you name it, we have got it! Considering over 25 years of experience in the industry, Zoho can work with any industry verticals and get their software, application, and (or) cloud needs fulfilled.

You said, SMEs are your prime target. Please give us an overview of how do you help these enterprises starting from their onboarding?

Our model is a bit different from other solution providers. Most of these enterprises are stuck at a problem, we identify them, initially, and suggest solutions. We are not selling a product to them rather solving a problem they are facing.

The initial interactions between Zoho and its customers would generally happen at the consultation level, then go face-to-face to address issues, and finally, get into deep roots. The consultation part is absolutely free and that way we build trust with our enterprise customers. From ERP application to cloud data management, everything will be taken care of appropriately via this business model.

Tell us about your industry focus (i.e., healthcare or education)

As explained previously, we have 50+ products. With these products, we can build solutions that can cater to any verticals including healthcare and education. For healthcare, we have all compliances (e.g., HIPAA) and competencies that a solution developer should have. Similarly, we have software for inventory management, banking, finance, etc.

Enterprises can buy both individual software solutions and required packages from Zoho. Starting from CRM to chatbot, from email campaigning to SMS campaigning, from social media to create a website, and from survey management to helpdesk solutions, we offer many solutions that customers need.

Tell us about the cloud support Zoho offers to its customers and software integrations to your platforms.

We have more than 10 data centers across the globe and we are building more – by the second quarter of 2022 we are planning to launch them. We neither operate through nor use any public clouds as we have strict privacy protection, and security policies. We don’t advertise other data centers or let others use ours – we have a single cloud approach.

We use rest APIs, through which customers can integrate any other software or application interfaces in need. We do that with more than 500 applications through which specific businesses can operate.

Speak briefly about the competition you face in the industry

We face competition in multiple areas such as CRM, census, email campaigning, surveys, etc. However, we can offer more flexibility to customers than most prominent players. We have every compliance and our products can be customized based on the specific needs of customers. These qualities keep us growing!

The latest release includes powerful new functionality to enable manufacturers to grow, innovate, and compete in today’s ever-changing global landscape. Marquee capabilities include new business intelligence and visual analytics capabilities delivered via Epicor Data Discovery, a completely redesigned home page, Active Home Page, Smart Inventory Planning and Optimization, as well as new country and industry-specific functionality.

“Businesses that adopt the latest technologies in cloud, analytics, and employee experience will be fit to grow and respond to the new digital challenges of tomorrow while achieving a competitive advantage right now,” said Scott Hays, senior vice president, product marketing, Epicor. “In this, our third major release in the past 13 months, Epicor continues to deliver cloud-enabled, industry-specific functionality, globalization and localization, mobility, and action-oriented analytics, with continued improvements in customer experience, ease-of-use, and performance.”

According to a recent Gartner report, “In 2018, data and analytics can’t be ignored — analytics will drive major innovation and disrupt established business models in the coming years.”

Epicor ERP equips personnel with critical insights at a glance for better, faster analysis and execution. Active Home Page provides dashboard views of role-based analytics with quick access to role-based functionality. This is made possible through Epicor Data Discovery (EDD), which supports rich on-demand data exploration to surface real-time operational and business performance insights to guide decision making. EDD encapsulates complex data sets into easy-to-understand graphs and charts to allow users to quickly gauge performance, understand trends and opportunities, drill down into data sets, and test out “what if” scenarios.

Optimal inventory strategies are essential to drive profitability and growth. With Epicor Smart Inventory Planning and Optimization—an integrated set of cloud-based capabilities for demand planning, inventory optimization, and supply chain analytics—businesses can drive best-practice sales and inventory operations planning (SIOP) and monitor myriad factors to prescribe inventory policies and service levels that yield the lowest total cost.

New country- and industry-specific functionality provides support for the job at hand – whether it’s tax processing in Penang or casting and coating in Kansas City. Functionality localized for specific geographic regions supports global business compliance and reporting, tax and payment processing, and international trade requirements, including legal numbering, and non-recoverable taxes.
Epicor customers using the Epicor Mattec MES solution will also benefit from improvements in MES-ERP integration to more easily account for various parameters and dependencies related to jobs, scheduling, operators, and/or machines.

Committed to providing positive experiences for its customers, Epicor has focused on “ease of everything” from deployment, education, through support, upgrades, and maintenance, resulting in greater profitability, productivity, and growth. New enhancements make it easier than ever for manufacturers to upgrade to the latest version of Epicor ERP to leverage new features and functionality to support growth and competitive advantage.

The latest version of Epicor ERP is now generally available worldwide, however, some functionality while available in the United States is not available in all regions and is expected to become generally available globally in 2018.

“Upgrading Epicor ERP is now easier than ever before, which allows us to go through the upgrade process with minimal business disruption,” said Martine Kennedy, IT Project Manager with Windsor Mold Group. The company has leveraged Epicor ERP since 2010 to support operational excellence. The Windsor, Ontario-based company’s automotive components division was named a Supplier of the Year by General Motors in 2016.

The IFS and ISYX partnership will help deliver IFS’s innovative product portfolio to customers across the Middle East and Africa. Drawing on the companies’ long and successful track record in areas such as aviation, construction, manufacturing, and asset intensive industries, ISYX will work with IFS to build a strong customer base.

As part of the agreement, ISYX will market and deploy IFS’s complete range of enterprise applications including enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM) and field service management (FSM) for its customers across the MEA region. ISYX is also investing in training and certification of its presales and delivery teams through the IFS Academy. By building local competency and capabilities in IFS Applications, ISYX will help customers transition through the digital era.

“We are very excited to be developing joint opportunities with IFS and look forward to a rewarding partnership,” said Sharoon Shamsuddin, CEO, ISYX Technologies. “IFS is a globally recognized leader in enterprise software, and coupled with our global presence in ten countries servicing 500+ customers, the partnership will empower organizations to advance their digital transformation by adding value and industry expertise.”

Shamsuddin added, “Our approach is to adopt the role of an ‘advisor’ to our customers, understand their business challenges and address them by providing fully integrated end-to-end solutions to support their complex business needs. Partnering with IFS has helped us further strengthen our solutions portfolio. We look forward to working closely with their global and local teams to provide our customers with the highest levels of service and support through all phases of the deployment and increase IFS’s footprint and market share in the MEA region.”

Luis Ortega, Managing Director for IFS in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, said, “We are pleased to announce the partnership with ISYX Technologies and we expect that our cooperation will result in a growing customer base in the Middle East and Africa.”

Sage offers flexible, integrated and scalable solutions for organizations ranging from start-ups to scale-ups, to mid-sized and larger enterprises. Keith Fenner, Vice President Sage Enterprise Africa and Middle East discusses the company’s cloud first focus and partner enablement

Discuss the cloud focus at Sage

It is definitely cloud first strategy for us. Having said that, wholesale transition to cloud is not a possibility and our customers aren’t interested in that anyway. We are focused in three market segments on three cloud products. The enterprise product will always be available as on premise version as well as a multi-tenancy cloud product. Then there is the enterprise cloud which would be the private cloud product for customers who have their own development environments, test environments.

The interesting thing Our R&D roadmap for Sage X3 delivers to cloud first in iterative updates. Every week, every 2 weeks, every month, the cloud is being updated as you can imagine; it is elastic R&D. Every 6 months to 12 months, we collect all of those updates and create an on-premises patch. So this is an instance of cloud first focus.

While our focus is the cloud for the future, we know that our customers are going to move to the cloud at their own pace. Which is why we still offer on-premises options, in the enterprise space.

What is the feedback from customers on cloud adoption?

Every customer conversation we are having in the region now involves cloud, whether they are transacting cloud or not. They typically are keen to know about Sage’s cloud strategy, when they could take cloud on, whether they can come off cloud if they don’t like it and what is our strategy towards data in the region with legislative requirements. Our strategy is to deliver to the UAE and Saudi data centers for now which covers large part of the region. In short, our cloud is strategy is quite focused and we are offering a choice that other vendors aren’t. However, at the moment, most transactions are still with on-premises editions.

How will the cloud delivery model unfold and how does the channel benefit?

We have an agreement with a provider that runs the datacenter in UAE and Saudi Arabia and are in process of authentication and certification of the data centers. Within the cloud model, the contract is between us and the customer. We have worked towards the model wherein Sage is the contractor where it is our responsibility for the data center, obviously on a back to back agreement. As our business model is via the channel, we are protecting the partner who still has the margins and does the services. While it does take some consulting time off for the partners with the software being preloaded on the cloud, we hand it to the partners for all further services.

How has the public cloud model worked until now for Sage in the region? What options do you offer to customers?

Prior to now, customers in the region have had the choice of running our X3 cloud from Amazon AWS. But there have concerns about need for data to reside in local data centers with reference to local legislative requirements in some countries. We have to be vigilant on that and deliver solution to address the challenges. There have also been issues of latency in some countries as well.

If customers are comfortable of running the solution in the public cloud, they can do it. We also offer the private cloud options for customers who want customization and then there is the local hosting option to round off.

How are you enabling partners in the cloud Business?

We have been explaining to partners the importance of moving to a cloud based services model from the traditional way of Business. We have our ways of enabling partners towards the cloud model. All partners, technically, can sell both cloud and on premises options. However, there is a difference in just flaunting a cloud logo and in being actively involved in driving the digital transformation towards the cloud in the market place. We are committed to this education towards helping them make this transformation. We have some great business incentives to encourage the transition. And I would reiterate the point that we are a channel focused company and in the cloud model, while we are the contractor, the channel is the services element behind the contract.

Discuss the customer preference for private cloud deployment?

Customers running for critical environments tend to prefer private cloud options. For ERP covering big sites with a lot of integrations and significant customization, where our customers are stepping out of Sage X3 best practice processes and are building their own best practices or changing them a bit, they probably have a large IT team and will want to control their upgrade path, have a sandbox up in the cloud, have their test and development services etc. That is a different world altogether and they are quite comfortable with the private cloud which offer them better security, backup as well as DR options etc.

How do you see yourself across the different customer segments? What is the emphasis on the enterprise part?

We have three distinct segments for our products- start-up, scale-up and enterprise. Sage 50 which is Peachtree is for start-ups. We have four versions which are Sage 50 US, Sage 50 UK, Sage 50 Canada and Sage 50 Middle East. The strategy is to get every customer in the region to get on to the Sage-Middle East version which does transactions upto 3 decimal places. That is a process which will take time as it involves a huge number of customers. The change would be the introduction of the cloud based start-up product Sage One in the region when we do it. We have some work ahead of that including Arabisation and we would like to hit the road to the market hard when we have it ready and look at offering a difference.

In the scale up segment, Sage 300 is growing in the region, has a lot of partners transacting. The cloud version is Sage live. In fact, for long, the scale up and the start-up segments have been the traditional strongholds for Sage and we have been regarded as a mid-market player.

The focus now with the roadshows we have been doing is to build up the brand in the enterprise segment. We want to become regarded as an enterprise player along with the names that have been traditionally considered as enterprise players. Our brand awareness needs to be enhanced on the enterprise side but having said that, we have been closing some great enterprise deals in the region. In Africa, we are pretty strong on the enterprise and we will look to replicate that here.

Discuss outlook for growth and the partner focus?

We grew our business globally by 74% last year and partners are a key part of our growth focus. In the cloud model, while Sage is the contractor ultimately, in services the channel is involved. While we don’t have a post sales team but we do run a quality team that will check the integrity and sign off the project milestones, which gives the assurance to customers. We have some very larger partners that are making sizeable investments in growing the business. We have around 25 consultants that are responsible for consultation, implementation, BPR, change management etc.

Epicor is also recruiting new partners across the Middle East, Africa, Australia and South Asia. The recruitment will focus on broadening the company’s experience in niche/specialist verticals as well as key technology areas such as the cloud.

“We recognize that the world is changing at rapid pace and we need to continue to evolve our channel strategy in order to better serve our customers and enable them to focus on growing their business,” said Hesham El Komy, senior director, international channel for Epicor Software.

He continued, “We now offer an innovative style of program that is tailored to the needs of our international partners, rather than the traditional tiered programs with stepped reward systems that have not changed in the last 30 years. The program is based on the latest channel industry best practices that will reward our partners for adding value, growing their Epicor business and thereby helping to grow ours. This will not only help us future-proof our channel but it will also give partners access to great benefits beyond just margins.”

Vetri Selvan, managing director for RheinBrücke, an Epicor partner in Europe, Middle East and India said, “We have been an international partner for over five years and offer a complete range of services from business consulting, solution architecting, through project management, implementation and support on Epicor ERP and Epicor iScala. We use the Epicor channel program extensively and I am happy to say that it has been a key differentiator and instrumental to our continued business growth. The new program is well orchestrated, with detailed phases for initiation, collaboration and expansion. This will help all partners enhance their capabilities, work closer together with Epicor and expand on their existing business. The ERP market is ripe with opportunities and if resellers want to take part in that growth they need to partner with the right vendor, such as Epicor.”

Raju MV, director for FujiSoft, an Epicor partner in the Middle East commented, “We welcome the launch of a new partner program that motivates us to better plan for business growth. The new program will enable the whole team, including sales, consulting and support staff, to grow together and focus on improving the customer experience rather than just focus on sales margins. The combination of great products, great support and a low number of partners makes partnership with Epicor very compelling for us.”