Speaking to TechGraph, Vinay Singh, Co-Founder of BeatRoute, discusses how their Goal-Driven Sales Technology and collaborative automation framework revolutionize sales processes and optimize customer engagement.
Read the complete interview:
TechGraph: Can you tell us about BeatRoute’s retail sales enablement platform features?
Vinay Singh: During the initial phase of our journey, we started by solving problems of operational efficacy and efficiency for distributed teams of retail brands. We would use GPS awareness to enhance the efficiency of sales teams and intelligence to enhance sales performance for channel partners, and retailers.
As we progressed, we discovered that mere visibility and workflows and insights alone were insufficient for brands to attain their business objectives. While conversing with business leaders, they often expressed satisfaction with the tools they were using. However, when asked if they had reached their business goals through those tools, the response was frequently negative. Essentially, a disconnect existed between the brands’ business objectives and the platforms employed for their Route-to-Market.
This realization inspired us to create our innovative Goal-Driven Sales Technology. This technology empowers brands to establish their business objectives within our platform and directs their sales teams and channel partners toward achieving those goals. We employ various methods, such as input-based gamification, pinpointing learning needs for specific skills, and utilizing artificial intelligence to assist managers in problem-solving.
In essence, while we have a pretty extensive feature set to meet all the requirements of brands to run their Route-to-Market, the real value is unlocked by how we enable the brands to utilize these features to execute their sales strategy and achieve their specific business goals on the ground.
TechGraph: How does BeatRoute’s platform help brands improve sales performance and customer engagement?
Vinay Singh: There are two major ways we help brands. One is Goal-Driven Sales Technology (GDST) that I just described. Another is our collaborative automation framework, which empowers brands’ sales teams, distributors, and retailers with purpose-built workflows according to the needs of the brand, and fosters deep collaboration among all these stakeholders.
Customer engagement is one area where we have been building our capabilities in the last few years and are seeing substantial value additions for our customers. For example, Colgate Philippines has been experimenting with direct digital connections with retailers to augment sales reps’ physical visits and drive specific objectives in select stores. The company uses our technology to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences, which allows it to tailor its channel marketing efforts more effectively. This has also allowed Colgate to build stronger relationships with its retailers.
TechGraph: In the wake of the pandemic, how has BeatRoute adapted its retail sales and distribution platform in order to meet the changing needs of the retail industry?
Vinay Singh: Pandemic completely stopped the physical sales visits that retail brands have relied on for decades. In response, we enabled our customers with our social media connected customer app to run B2B commerce with their retailers.
While the pandemic is now behind brands, it led to a permanent change of attitudes toward digital engagements. During that period, brands realized that digital channels can complement sales reps really well in terms of incremental goals.
Consequently, retailer-facing interfaces were not only a pandemic phenomenon, they ushered us into a scalable eB2B commerce channel. Brands can use it to run their own eB2B channel and are now seeing a positive response from large enterprise customers.
TechGraph: What are some of the challenges brands may face when adopting BeatRoute’s platform, and how does the company address those challenges?
Vinay Singh: Selling software to enterprise customers comes with its own challenges. They have very long deal closure cycles, multiple teams such as sales, IT, legal, and others are involved in vetting the software and then there are challenges related to adoption.
We have resolved these challenges by building a true enterprise SaaS platform. By enterprise SaaS, we mean that it readily meets enterprise customers’ stringent requirements in terms of security, scalability, and zero-code customization.
We have ensured that our platform is user-friendly and easily configurable by brands’ admin teams without needing extensive technical expertise, which helps speed up the adoption process. Furthermore, we provide comprehensive customer support with dedicated customer success teams that assist with onboarding, training, configuration, and ongoing support.
TechGraph: How does BeatRoute measure the success of its retail sales and distribution platform, and what metrics do you use to evaluate its performance?
Vinay Singh: There are two ways to measure the success of our platform for any customer. The first is to measure adoption, which tells us how frequently and how deeply the brand’s sales team members, distributors, and retailers are using the workflows they have been provided.
The second is to measure the actual achievement of brand sales goals using our platform. Each brand has its own sales strategy and expects different business outcomes from BeatRoute. For us, real success comes from customers coming to us and telling us about the business impact we have made for them. That is why you will see many customer testimonials on our YouTube channel and website.
TechGraph: Can you walk us through how your platform uses data insights to help brands optimize their sales? What specific metrics and KPIs do you track to measure success?
Vinay Singh: We believe in enabling the brands to fully adapt our platform to their needs. This belief extends into the way we have built our ScoreCard and Report Builder modules. One of the first things that we help the brands do when they come onboard BeatRoute is to configure their KPIs in our ScoreCard module according to their sales goals. We provide them with a wide range of pre-built KPIs that they can further modify according to their needs.
There is also a provision for creating new KPIs from scratch. These KPIs can be customized to align with each brand’s unique business goals and sales strategies. For instance, if a brand aims to expand into a new region in the upcoming months, its KPIs may include metrics such as the number of successful store launches. In addition, it may include the variety of stores established, recurring orders from new outlets, and other factors deemed crucial for successful regional expansion.
Similarly, we have recently launched our Report Builder module that brands can use to create custom dashboards and make these dashboards available to their sales teams and channel partners without relying on third-party tools.
TechGraph: What plans does BeatRoute have for expanding its platform’s capabilities and features in the future? How will this benefit both current and potential users of the platform?
Vinay Singh: As an enterprise SaaS platform, we are continuously improving our offering by adding new capabilities and building more depth in our existing workflows. We release a major platform update every quarter and minor updates every month and are proud to say that we are the only platform in our industry to maintain a public record of our version updates.
We have customers with us who have been on BeatRoute for more than 5 years now. Their requirements 5 years ago would have been totally different from what they need today, and what they shall need in 2030. We have ensured that our customers always benefit from state-of-the-art technology and are committed to ensuring that they can use BeatRoute to run their Route-to-Market for the decades to come, regardless of how markets change.
