Whatfix Digital Adoption platform provides contextual and real-time guidance: Prakhar Jain

Whatfix is a SaaS-based platform that provides in-app guidance and performance support for web applications and software products. Whatfix helps companies to create interactive walkthroughs that appear within web applications. It has offices in San Jose, California and Bengaluru, India.

Here, Prakhar Jain, Director of Global Sales, Whatfix, tells us more. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: What are Whatfix’s plans for the global digital adoption platform market with Salesforce?

Prakhar Jain: Today, digital transformation is one of the most important strategies on the boardroom agenda for enterprises, with its success depending heavily on how well users adopt and adapt to these digital technologies. Whatfix’s Digital Adoption Platform disrupts the way application support and training is delivered to end-users of enterprise applications by providing contextual and real-time guidance, providing layers on top of web-based applications to deliver continuous on-demand training and proactive support to employees and customers.

Whatfix, set up in 2014 with three people, today employs 300 people in six offices across the globe. Today, we service more than 500 customers; 100 of these are Fortune 1000 companies. Our mission is to empower companies to maximize business outcomes by eliminating technology complexities for their users. Our vision has always been to make applications simpler and technology easier to use for employees and customers and this is what keeps us going everyday.

Maintaining the same level of customer experience is particularly challenging as we scale globally. Prior to the adoption of Salesforce, we had no unified view of the data flow from marketing to sales to customer success. As a result, we were unable to drive any insights to make real-time data-based decisions. This negatively impacted the overall customer experience.

In such a scenario, we needed a sizable and scalable CRM platform that could intelligently become the central nervous system of the organization by integrating into our existing tools and systems.

Salesforce has truly provided us with the scale, speed and agility to deliver to our customers across small and large enterprise companies. The streamlining of data within the teams and automation of routine  processes has helped us drive efficiency and also develop a scalable business model. The Salesforce solutions supports our rapid growth as we scale globally and further tap into other Fortune 1,000 companies in the near future.

DQ: CRM has been around. Why CRM again? What's new?

Prakhar Jain: The current scenario has drastically changed the rules of engagement. Customer expectations are changing at a rapid pace, making it imperative for businesses to adopt digital transformation for survival.

At Whatfix, customers and customer experience are the core of our business – Very early on in our journey, we saw the need for a CRM technology to understand and meet the requirements of a wide range of customers. The Salesforce solution offers us more customisation, integration, and reporting within the organisation; allowing us to make more informed decisions backed by data. The way we look at CRM has completely transformed.

Additionally, equipping the sales team with a real-time, single view of the customer journey, allows them to sell smarter. This has increased employee productivity by up to 40%, in turn enabling seamless customer experience.

DQ: How is Salesforce helping your business?

Prakhar Jain: In a webinar recently, I was asked a question, that if all your technology stack was taken away, and you were just offered one tool to retain, what would that be - and my answer was Salesforce.

Salesforce helps us in a variety of ways:

* Helps us make better data driven decisions

* 360-degree overview of data flow

* All data updated and fresh - less needs for internal meetings

* Automated pipeline management

* Differentiated buyer journeys

* Automation workflows.

Apart from the above, the power comes with the customisations and integrations. We have a complete tech stack for automation. It allows us to integrate any tool globally. Right now, we have about 10+ tools integrated into Salesforce. So, it necessarily has become our central nervous system.

I can’t imagine during this time that if we didn’t have Salesforce, how else we’d be managing during the remote working times.

DQ: How are data-rich dashboards helping the businesses?

Prakhar Jain: Salesforce helps in making tons of data-driven decisions. We have broadly classified them as:

* For reps and managers

* For leadership

* For GTM channels (partnerships, etc.).

There are plenty of metrics we track like - quota attainment, conversion ratios from lead > opp > closed won/lost/dropped, sales cycle, win rate, average deal size, activities, forecasting, discounting patterns and so on.. the list is endless - it is only possible because of the streamlined data flow.

Salesforce has improved our forecasting accuracy three-fold. It also helps us identify areas of improvement. In an SME environment where every dollar matters, these inputs are invaluable.

DQ: How are you tapping the SMEs?

Prakhar Jain: For Whatfix, anyone using an application that requires onboarding, training or support is a prospect. We don’t necessarily target SMEs, but mainly enterprises.

Whatfix currently has 500+ customers globally, out of which, 100 are Fortune 1000s. That’s our ideal target market also, because the complexity of the problem we are solving takes a different magnitude at scale. Each enterprise technology implementation is a multi-million-dollar spend for larger companies. We help ensure our customers’ applications are being used in the best possible way and hence, our fit with larger enterprises.

The Salesforce solutions equip our sales team or anyone in the organisation with the right expertise to contribute to a pitch or demo, with a real-time, single view of the customer journey. This allows them to sell smarter while delivering more value to the customers, more so in the SME sector.