VirtuosWinsUS$1MillionMakeMyTripDeal—OneofAsia’sBiggestOn-DemandCRMProjectsinTravel

Some wins bring revenue.

Some bring a prestigious customer.

And then there are wins that fundamentally change the confidence, credentials and trajectory of a young company.

For Virtuos, MakeMyTrip was one of those wins.

On 30 June 2009, Virtuos announced that it had secured a US$1 million, multi-year CRM contract with MakeMyTrip, India's leading online travel company.

At the time, Virtuos described it as Asia's biggest On-Demand CRM deal in the travel sector.

For a company only about 18 months old, the scale of the opportunity was remarkable.

But the real story wasn't simply the size of the contract.

It was the journey to win it.

The MakeMyTrip pursuit was anything but straightforward.

Virtuos and RightNow worked on the opportunity for close to a year.

There were:

It became one of the most demanding sales pursuits Virtuos had undertaken.

The deal also captures something about the intensity of building Virtuos during its earliest years.

RightNow's regional teams were in Australia.

The customer was in India.

Virtuos sat in the middle—coordinating product specialists, technical teams, demonstrations, proofs of concept and constantly evolving customer requirements.

The working day could begin at 3:00 AM to collaborate with RightNow's Australian teams—and finish around 11:00 PM after responding to MakeMyTrip's requirements.

This rhythm continued for months.

Venky Vijay Reddi, who led the Virtuos pursuit, described the period as one in which the team had “barely had time to sleep.”

It was an extraordinary level of commitment for a small organization pursuing a customer considerably larger than itself.

MakeMyTrip did not enter the selection process with a narrow shortlist.

The company evaluated CRM technologies from some of the industry's most established names, including:

alongside platforms including Pivotel and Sage.

The decision involved extensive evaluation of technology, functionality, implementation capability, industry expertise and customer references.

Virtuos was also competing for credibility against much larger consulting organizations.

The original account records comparisons with organizations including:

Virtuos was tiny by comparison.

The original 2009 company profile listed just 10–20 employees.

• 10–20 people.
• A US$1 million opportunity.
• One of India's best-known Internet companies.

That contrast makes the win one of the most significant stories from Virtuos' formative years.

That was perhaps the central question.

MakeMyTrip already had relationships with larger technology vendors and had previously implemented Microsoft Dynamics ERP through another provider.

Virtuos couldn't win because it was bigger.

It had to win because the customer believed it could deliver.

So MakeMyTrip went looking for evidence.

The company visited RightNow customer reference sites in India and spoke with organizations already operating RightNow technology.

MakeMyTrip also investigated Virtuos itself.

It spoke with two of Virtuos' important early enterprise customers: Standard Chartered Bank and GE Healthcare.

Those references mattered.

Projects completed during Virtuos' first year were now helping the company win something much larger in its second.

Customer success was beginning to compound.

This wasn't a technology decision made by a single department.

The Virtuos team engaged extensively with MakeMyTrip's leadership, including:

• Deep Kalra — CEO
• Rajesh Magow — CFO
• Chetan Oberoi — CTO
• Rajnish Kapur — CIO
• Mohit Gupta — CMO

along with approximately a dozen members of MakeMyTrip's CRM committee.

Each executive looked at CRM through a different lens.

• Technology
• Finance
• Marketing
• Operations
• Customer Service
• Scalability
• Integration
• Business outcomes
• Travel-industry requirements

The solution therefore had to withstand scrutiny from across the enterprise.

The scope was extensive.

MakeMyTrip wasn't purchasing a small sales automation application.

The RightNow Cloud environment covered hundreds of Agent Desktop licenses together with a broad portfolio of Customer Experience capabilities.

This was not merely CRM.

It was the architecture for a much broader customer interaction environment.

MakeMyTrip had enormous expectations from the program.

The CRM environment needed to support approximately a dozen Lines of Business.

Travel is inherently complex.

• Flights
• Hotels
• Holiday packages
• Bookings
• Cancellations
• Changes
• Payments
• Customer queries
• Disruptions
• Refunds
• Promotions
• Service recovery

Each can generate large volumes of customer interaction.

The challenge was to bring greater consistency across those experiences while maintaining the speed expected of an Internet company.

• One customer.
• Multiple journeys.
• Multiple businesses.
• Multiple channels.
• One CRM strategy.

Virtuos understood early that generic CRM knowledge wouldn't be enough.

The team studied the particular requirements of the travel industry.

RightNow already had international travel brands using its technology, including organizations such as ebookers, Orbitz and Travelocity.

That global experience provided valuable context.

But MakeMyTrip had its own operating model, technology environment and ambitions.

Virtuos therefore had to combine:

The result had to feel like a solution for MakeMyTrip—not merely an implementation of RightNow.

MakeMyTrip presented another challenge.

Although fundamentally a travel business, it considered technology central to its identity and competitive advantage.

Its technical teams questioned Virtuos deeply.

Amarinder Singh, Solution Lead Engineer-II, recalled spending long nights conducting proofs of concept at MakeMyTrip and being repeatedly challenged by the customer's technology specialists.

That scrutiny raised the bar.

Virtuos couldn't simply demonstrate product functionality.

The team needed to explain architecture, integrations, scalability, business practices and how the technology would operate within MakeMyTrip's broader digital ecosystem.

Large wins often appear inevitable after they happen.

They rarely feel that way while they are being pursued.

The MakeMyTrip deal involved a small Virtuos team carrying a very large opportunity for months.

Venky Vijay Reddi led the pursuit and senior customer engagement.

Amarinder Singh drove technical solutioning and proofs of concept.

Priyanka Sood, Product Marketing Analyst, helped address the breadth of questions coming from MakeMyTrip's executives and departments.

Kristina Hermanns, Solution Analyst, contributed travel-industry and RightNow expertise.

And specialists from RightNow Technologies APAC, including Yong Sheng Li (YS) and his colleagues, travelled to India to support the pursuit and engage MakeMyTrip's senior leadership.

It became a joint Virtuos–RightNow effort.

Winning the opportunity required commitment from the technology partner as well.

RightNow's APAC team made several visits to India to engage directly with MakeMyTrip's leadership.

The objective was clear:

Demonstrate that MakeMyTrip wasn't simply placing its trust in a young local consulting company.

It was gaining:

That combination ultimately proved compelling.

The chronology tells the story best.

For Virtuos, MakeMyTrip represented more than a major order.

It validated several ideas on which the young company had been built.

Seen from today's perspective, the scope of the MakeMyTrip engagement is particularly revealing.

• Contact Center
• Chat
• Knowledge
• Web Self-Service
• Sales
• Service
• Marketing
• Customer Feedback
• Customer Satisfaction
• Hundreds of agent desktops
• Multiple lines of business

These capabilities collectively went far beyond what many organizations once thought of as CRM.

They touched almost every major point where the customer interacted with the enterprise.

The terminology was still CRM.
The ambition was already Customer Experience.

The MakeMyTrip win also represented an important turning point in the Virtuos–RightNow partnership.

The relationship had progressed rapidly:

The partnership now had a major Indian Internet and travel reference.

And that success would soon take Virtuos onto RightNow's broader Asia-Pacific stage.