Mumbai, 20 May 2013 — Virtuos Solutions, through its high-performance consulting division Virtuos Consultare, announced a significant new enterprise customer engagement with Thomas Cook (India) Limited, one of India's leading travel and travel-related financial services companies.
The agreement followed an intensely competitive evaluation involving major Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology providers, including Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce.com.
Thomas Cook India selected Virtuos and Oracle RightNow CX Cloud for a comprehensive Customer Experience initiative spanning sales, customer service, marketing, digital engagement and knowledge management.
The engagement represented a major achievement for Virtuos, combining its established travel-industry expertise with Oracle's cloud-based Customer Experience technology.
Under the agreement, Thomas Cook India committed to a three-year, non-cancellable Oracle RightNow CX Suite contract, with implementation services to be delivered by Virtuos Consultare.
The project was designed to support multiple business divisions and hundreds of customer-facing locations across India, marking one of Virtuos' most significant travel-sector customer acquisitions at the time.
A Strategic Win Following Four Years of Engagement
The Thomas Cook India opportunity represented the culmination of a sustained business development effort that began in 2009.
Virtuos had been engaged in presales discussions with Thomas Cook India for several years, building its understanding of the company's business requirements and the complexities of its customer-facing operations.
During the final six months of the evaluation, competition intensified considerably.
Virtuos ultimately prevailed against Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce.com, demonstrating the strength of its proposed Oracle RightNow solution and its specialized knowledge of the travel industry.
Commenting on the achievement, Venky Vijay Reddi, CEO of Virtuos, said:
“We have been doing the pre-sale activities with Thomas Cook India since 2009. In the last six months, the battle turned too aggressive, and finally, Virtuos had won against the fierce competition from Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce.com.”
He attributed the selection to Virtuos' travel-sector expertise and the ability of Oracle RightNow to deliver business value.
The outcome underscored the importance of industry understanding, solution capability and long-term customer engagement in winning complex enterprise technology opportunities.
Three-Year Enterprise Agreement for Oracle RightNow CX Cloud
Thomas Cook India signed a three-year agreement covering the principal Sales, Service and Marketing modules of Oracle RightNow CX Suite.
The subscription also included additional capabilities for live customer interaction, knowledge management and online self-service. The contracted solution encompassed:
Sales
Supporting customer-facing sales processes and relationship management.
Service
Enabling structured management of customer inquiries and service interactions.
Marketing
Providing application capabilities relevant to customer communications and marketing activities.
Chat
Supporting real-time digital customer assistance.
Knowledge Management
Helping organize and provide access to service-related information.
Web Self-Service
Enabling customers to access online assistance through subscribed self-service sessions.
Together, these capabilities were intended to create a more connected environment for customer engagement across Thomas Cook India's diverse operations.
The agreement also reflected the growing adoption of cloud-based enterprise applications by established Indian businesses seeking to modernize their customer-facing technology infrastructure.
Supporting Hundreds of Thomas Cook Locations Across India
A defining feature of the engagement was its nationwide operational scope.
Virtuos Consultare was selected to implement modular Oracle RightNow capabilities supporting hundreds of Thomas Cook foreign exchange counters and showcase centres across India.
These customer-facing locations represented important points of interaction between Thomas Cook and its customers.
The proposed implementation needed to accommodate the requirements of a distributed business with multiple services, customer journeys and operational processes.
Rather than treating Customer Experience as a single departmental application, the engagement envisioned a modular platform capable of supporting different business functions.
This approach would allow Oracle RightNow capabilities to be aligned with the operational requirements of Thomas Cook's various business units.
The nationwide footprint also highlighted the significance of selecting an implementation partner with enterprise CRM expertise and an understanding of the travel and foreign exchange industries.
Connecting Customer Experience Across Multiple Business Lines
Thomas Cook India's business extended well beyond conventional travel bookings.
The company operated across several travel, financial and customer service segments, each with its own requirements for customer interaction and relationship management.
The Oracle RightNow implementation was intended to support multiple lines of business, including:
E-Commerce
Digital customer engagement and online service interactions.
Inbound Travel
Customer service requirements relating to travel into India.
International Travel
Support for customers purchasing international travel products and services.
MICE
Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions-related customer operations.
Foreign Exchange
Customer-facing activities across the company's extensive foreign exchange network.
The breadth of these operations made the engagement particularly relevant to Virtuos' specialization in Customer Experience technologies.
Each business line involved distinct service processes, but all shared a requirement for responsive customer engagement and reliable access to information.
The implementation was therefore intended to establish a technology foundation capable of supporting different customer service needs within a common enterprise CX platform.
Virtuos Consultare to Lead the Implementation
The implementation engagement was assigned to Virtuos Consultare, the company's dedicated high-performance consulting and professional services division.
The delivery team was to be led by Kristina Hermanns, bringing specialized Oracle RightNow expertise to the Thomas Cook India program.
The project was expected to involve an implementation cycle of more than six months, reflecting the scale of the business requirements and the number of operational functions covered.
The planned work would focus on deploying modular Oracle RightNow functionality aligned with Thomas Cook India's business divisions and customer-facing operations.
The engagement reinforced Virtuos Consultare's position as a specialist provider of Oracle Customer Experience consulting and implementation services.
It also demonstrated the relevance of combining technology knowledge with domain-specific understanding when addressing complex enterprise requirements.
Travel Industry Expertise Creates Competitive Differentiation
Virtuos' established experience in the travel and online commerce sectors played an important role in the Thomas Cook India selection.
By 2013, the company had already developed relationships with leading Indian travel and digital businesses, including MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip.
These engagements had provided Virtuos with exposure to the customer service demands of high-volume, digitally enabled travel businesses.
Travel organizations often manage interactions across the customer lifecycle, from initial inquiries and reservations to changes, service requests and post-purchase assistance.
For companies operating across physical branches, digital channels and multiple business units, coordinating these interactions presents additional challenges.
Virtuos' ability to understand such industry requirements helped differentiate its proposal from competing technology alternatives.
The Thomas Cook India win further strengthened the company's credentials in travel-sector Customer Experience consulting.
Oracle RightNow: A Cloud Platform for Enterprise Customer Engagement
Oracle RightNow CX Cloud was an important component of Oracle's expanding Customer Experience application portfolio following its acquisition of RightNow Technologies in 2012.
The platform offered cloud-based capabilities supporting customer service, digital interactions, knowledge management and other customer-facing functions.
For organizations such as Thomas Cook India, the technology provided an opportunity to bring multiple Customer Experience functions into a more coordinated application environment.
The contracted Sales, Service and Marketing modules, together with Chat, Knowledge Management and Web Self-Service, reflected the broad scope of the proposed initiative.
The agreement also demonstrated the growing importance of cloud applications in enterprises that historically depended on a combination of branch operations, service teams and traditional business systems.
Virtuos' established experience with RightNow technology positioned it to support organizations evaluating these new cloud-based Customer Experience capabilities.
A Major Milestone in Virtuos' Enterprise Customer Portfolio
The Thomas Cook India win followed a series of significant enterprise engagements secured by Virtuos. Its customer portfolio included organizations such as:
These relationships reflected the company's growing experience across financial services, travel, digital commerce, education, healthcare and international enterprise operations.
The addition of Thomas Cook India further diversified the portfolio while reinforcing Virtuos' strength in the travel and customer service sectors.
The competitive nature of the selection also demonstrated the company's ability to compete for enterprise opportunities involving globally established CRM platforms.
For Virtuos, the achievement was not simply the acquisition of another customer. It represented recognition of its industry expertise, solution capabilities and commitment to complex enterprise engagements.
Consultare Advances Its High-Performance Consulting Ambitions
The agreement also marked an important milestone for Virtuos Consultare, established in December 2012 to consolidate and expand the company's consulting and professional services capabilities.
Consultare was created to strengthen Virtuos' ability to deliver Customer Experience and enterprise technology services across the consulting and implementation lifecycle.
The Thomas Cook India engagement illustrated the type of enterprise opportunity the division was designed to address.
It required an understanding of business operations, specialized application expertise and the ability to plan a phased implementation across multiple organizational functions.
By securing the engagement, Consultare strengthened its position within Virtuos' expanding Customer Experience practice.
The project also supported the company's broader ambition to build a high-performance consulting organization serving major enterprises in India and international markets.
Strengthening the Future of Customer Experience in Travel
In 2013, the travel industry was experiencing significant changes in customer behaviour and technology adoption.
Customers were increasingly using digital channels to research, purchase and manage travel-related services, while established travel companies continued to operate extensive physical distribution networks.
This combination created a growing need for Customer Experience platforms capable of supporting different customer interaction channels and business processes.
Thomas Cook India's planned Oracle RightNow implementation reflected this evolution.
By investing in an enterprise CX platform spanning sales, service, marketing and digital support, the company was preparing to address customer engagement requirements across its diverse business portfolio.
Virtuos' role was to provide the specialized consulting and implementation expertise needed to translate those requirements into an operational technology solution.
A Defining Enterprise Win for Virtuos
The Thomas Cook India agreement represented one of Virtuos' notable enterprise customer acquisitions of 2013.
The opportunity had developed over four years, culminated in a highly competitive selection process and resulted in a three-year Oracle RightNow contract covering multiple business functions.
With hundreds of customer-facing locations within the intended scope and an implementation program expected to exceed six months, the engagement demonstrated the increasing scale of projects entrusted to Virtuos Consultare.
It also validated the company's investment in travel-industry expertise, cloud CRM specialization and long-term customer relationship development.
The Thomas Cook India win reinforced a central principle of Virtuos' growth journey:
Deep industry knowledge, specialized technology capabilities and sustained customer commitment can enable a focused consulting organization to compete successfully against much larger technology ecosystems.
