Before September 2019 ended, NTT Data Asia Pacific has wholly acquired Bangkok CRM expert and prominent system integrator Locus Telecommunications. The acquisition is intended for NTT Data, a leading IT service provider and the parent company of NTT DATA Asia Pacific, to enhance its market position in Thailand while strengthening its capabilities in customer relationship management (CRM), customer experience (CX) and analytics solutions.

Ken Tsuchihashi, President and CEO of Asia Pacific, NTT Data has shared that the company is thrilled and welcomes the talented Locus team to NTT Data. He expressed:

 “I’m confident that they will accelerate our ability to support customers in their digital transformation journeys. Through collaboration with Locus and other NTT group entities, we expect to become a top provider of IT solutions and services in Thailand within a few years.”

Headquartered in Bangkok, Locus is a leading provider of systems integration (SI) services in the country with expertise in digital-enablement solutions for CRM/CX, loyalty program management, business intelligence, data analytics solutions, and enterprise mobility. Since 1999, the consulting firm with around 150 IT consultants has successfully served more than 100 clients across various industries such as banking, insurance, telecommunication, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and utilities.

NTT Data President Tsuchihashi stated that the company would like to “create opportunities” with Locus’ market, cross-selling cross-selling to customers in fields such as banking, insurance, manufacturing, retail, and utilities. This is on top of the goal of accelerating the firm’s digital consulting and delivery capabilities in Thailand.

Andrew Yim, CEO of Locus, said:

“Access to NTT Data’s depth and breadth of service offerings and innovative global technologies will enable Locus to evolve from a niche player into a more comprehensive business solutions provider.” He added:

“NTT Data will both strengthen our core business and help us accelerate our expansion into big data, artificial intelligence and enterprise resource planning practices.”

NTT DATA is positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM and CX Implementation Services worldwide and a Challenger for Data and Analytics Service Providers worldwide in a recent Gartner report. 

Now with the Locus’ expertise and solutions, NTT DATA becomes a stronger partner in helping its customers through their digital transformation journey with enhanced digital capabilities and services.

NTT Data has been ramping up its presence in Thailand with its recent acquisitions including those of its subsidiaries.

Just this July, itelligence AG, Global SAP specialist and part of the global NTT Data group, acquired ISS Consulting. As one of the leading SAP consulting firms across Thailand, ISS Consulting focuses on manufacturing, automotive, retail, and food and beverage industry sectors employing around 250 people. The company specializes in S/4HANA, C/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Ariba, in addition to SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Business By Design and help desk support.

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At last week’s SAPPHIRE NOW conference, SAP made the formal introduction of a new suite of applications, SAP C/4HANA, to help businesses serve and retain customers, as well as SAP HANA Data Management Suite, a comprehensive data management solution.

According to SAP, C/4HANA modernises the sales-only focus of legacy CRM solutions by tying together solutions from Hybris, Gigya and CallidusCloud to support all front-office functions, such as consumer data protection, marketing, commerce, sales and customer service. It will be fully integrated with SAP’s business applications portfolio.

“SAP was the last to accept the status quo of CRM and is now the first to change it,” McDermott said. “The legacy CRM systems are all about sales; SAP C/4HANA is all about the consumer. We recognise that every part of a business needs to be focus on a single view of the consumer. When you connect all SAP applications together in an intelligent cloud suite, the demand chain directly fuels the behaviours of the supply chain.”

SAP has also made a new acquisition to improve field service customer experience, buying Switzerland-based Coresystems FSM AG. The company’s platform provides real-time scheduling for customer service requests and uses artificial intelligence-powered crowd service technology to assign the best-qualified technician to each call.

Based on the latest versions of the SAP HANA business data platform, SAP Data Hub solution, SAP Cloud Platform Big Data Services and SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer Web Application, the SAP HANA Data Management Suite will enable enterprises to bring together highly distributed structured and unstructured data into a single logic data set.

“Integration fuels intelligence. It’s time to reimagine end-to-end mega processes in a new suite experience for the enterprise,” McDermott said. “By connecting demand chain to supply chain, we help every part of the business serve and retain the customer.”

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CallidusCloud, which has a full suite of sales performance management (SPM) and configure-price-quote (CPQ) solutions, including sales enablement, sales analytics and customer engagement, has been a partner of SAP for some years, selling jointly to customers. The suite is tailored to the specific needs of salespeople on the ground, linking sales-related information such as pricing, incentives, and commissions, to enterprise resource planning systems. SAP’s existing sales portfolio will be enriched with sales planning and forecasting, territory management and pipeline management.

For SAP, the addition of CallidusCloud alongside its existing Customer Engagement suite will link front and back offices, align sales, compensation and corporate goals, and enable real-time data flow between the field and finance department.

“SAP is connecting the back office to the front office in this consumer-driven growth revolution,” said Bill McDermott, CEO, SAP. “Our customers are focused on reinventing sales, service, marketing and commerce. The addition of CallidusCloud aligns perfectly to SAP’s innovation strategy to transform the front office. SAP gives CallidusCloud the global scale to accelerate its already impressive growth.”

CallidusCloud CEO Leslie Stretch said the company was “super excited to join forces with SAP”.

“This move gives customers precisely what they want, the market leading Sales Performance (SPM), Sales Execution (CPQ) and Sales Enablement clouds combined with SAP Hybris and S/4HANA. This is true Lead to Money, beyond CRM and beyond Quote-to-Cash. It’s the joined-up Front Office and Back Office Cloud everyone needs for 21st century business. In addition, the purchase price provides substantial value to our stockholders.”

On the completion of the transaction, SAP will consolidate all CallidusCloud product assets within SAP Hybris solutions, as part of SAP’s Cloud Business Group. The SAP Cloud Platform will be used for the technical integration of CallidusCloud solutions, and the existing management team will continue to lead CallidusCloud.

The acquisition was unanimously approved by the CallidusCloud board of directors, with the transaction expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2018.

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The new version of the solution will enable users to correct inaccuracies in existing account and customer records as often as needed.

“Businesses today are facing a growing need to know their customers, empower their sellers with context, and tailor their messages for individual buyers. With this new release, InsideView deepens its native product integration with SAP Hybris Sales Cloud with customer and prospect data enrichment capabilities and real-time actionable intelligence that help salespeople to be more relevant and effective,” said Heidi Tucker, VP, alliances and business development, InsideView.

The InsideView solution integrates as a native app with SAP Hybris Sales Cloud, providing company and contact data, social and news insights, and business connections gathered from more than 40,000 sources.

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The top five vendors accounted for more than 45 per cent of the total market, with little change in ranking from 2014. Salesforce is still leading the way with 19.7 per cent, followed by SAP with 10.2 per cent, and Oracle with 7.8 per cent. A new entrant to the top five in 2015 was Adobe, which displaced IBM with its focus on CRM for marketing agencies and the chief marketing officer.

Other vendors still constitute 54.5 per cent of the total market, or $14.3 billion in revenues.

“The merger and acquisition activity that began flowing through the market in 2009 continued in 2015, with more than 30 notable acquisitions,” said Julian Poulter, research director at Gartner. “This has resulted in increased competition at the top end of the CRM market, with the continued focus of global vendors’ sales forces driving good growth worldwide in all CRM subsegments but only for cloud or software as a service (SaaS) applications.

“CRM growth is driven by cloud service revenue, which, in the application space, uses SaaS as the major delivery model,” said Poulter. “SaaS revenue grew 27 per cent year over year, which is more than double overall CRM market growth in 2015. On-premises new license revenue declined 1 per cent for the same period.”

At the regional level, emerging Asia-Pacific was the fastest-growing, with growth of 21.9 per cent in 2014, followed by greater China with 18.4 per cent growth. Middle East and North Africa, and mature Asia-Pacific posted double-digit growth of 10.7 and 10.2 per cent respectively. The North American market continued to generate the bulk of revenue at 55.7 per cent.

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“Today, being first to market, having the lowest price, or being the best does not necessarily help. Businesses need to be agile and give customers what they want 24/7. Customers may buy your products or services, but what keeps them coming back is the experience,” says Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, senior program manager, big data, analytics, enterprise applications and social lead, IDC Asia/Pacific.

To achieve this, marketing leaders need to become more savvy about the business, data and customers to address the needs of “empowered buyers”.

CMOs are already being expected to lead enterprise transformation around customer experience, with 31 per cent of CMOs expanding to include this area, including customer support.

What is new about the customer experience area, according to Jimenez, are that “organisations are increasingly focused on ensuring these initiatives are tracked and using metrics that are closely aligned to the business”.

The IDC Asia/Pacific CMO Barometer shows that the top three key performance indicators (KPIs) for marketing departments in 2015 are increasing market share (66 per cent), improving marketing processes – particularly measuring effectiveness (60 per cent) and increasing customer satisfaction ratings or Net promoter score (55 per cent).

These will need to be supported by three key IT requirements, identified by CMOs – investing in disruptive technologies that can help gain competitive edge (25 per cent), enabling a multi-channel environment (16 per cent), and driving improved marketing automation and productivity (13  per cent).

“The road is going to be bumpy since growing data silos are still a major challenge for many organisations. This is stopping them from really knowing their customers and fulfilling their expectations. To be successful they will need to partner with the CIO. CMOs and CIOs need to establish common goals and define shared KPIs that can help them track the success of their joint initiatives,” added Jimenez.

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