The early weeks of Virtuos were defined by momentum.
Having formally incorporated in January 2008, Virtuos was rapidly assembling the technology partnerships, consulting expertise and enterprise customer experience that would shape its emerging CRM business.
On 11 February 2008, another important piece fell into place.
Virtuos formally partnered with Maximizer to introduce and expand Maximizer CRM in the Indian market.
The partnership brought together Maximizer's established CRM product portfolio and Virtuos' growing expertise in consulting, implementation, integration and cloud-oriented CRM delivery.
For Virtuos, it represented another important step toward an ambition established from the beginning:
To bring globally proven CRM technologies together with strong local consulting and implementation expertise.
CRM—Across Every Deployment Model
One aspect of the partnership was particularly forward-looking for 2008.
Virtuos and Maximizer weren't positioning CRM purely as traditional enterprise software.
Maximizer CRM 10 was offered across deployment models designed to address different customer requirements:
On-Premise
For organizations wanting CRM deployed within their own enterprise infrastructure.
Private Cloud
For enterprises—particularly banks, financial-services organizations and telecom companies—requiring greater control over infrastructure, integration and data.
Public Cloud
For organizations seeking the accessibility and flexibility of hosted CRM.
Virtuos complemented the platform with services including installation, data migration, customization and third-party software integration.
At a time when enterprise cloud adoption was still developing, this ability to give customers a choice of deployment architecture represented an important element of the proposition.
Four Variants. A Broader CRM Opportunity.
Maximizer CRM 10 was introduced in four variants, enabling the partnership to address organizations ranging from small and medium-sized businesses to larger, more mature enterprises.
The new generation of the platform also reflected another technology shift already underway:
Mobility.
CRM was beginning to move beyond the desktop.
Support for multiple browsers and mobile screens pointed toward a future in which sales and service professionals could increasingly access customer information wherever they worked.
Today this sounds routine.
In 2008, it represented an important change in how enterprise CRM was being conceived.
100,000+ Companies—and an Opportunity for India
By the time of the partnership, Maximizer had built a substantial international CRM footprint, with its software used by more than 100,000 companies worldwide.
For Virtuos, that installed base represented more than market credibility.
It represented knowledge.
Thousands of organizations had already implemented CRM across different industries, processes and business models.
Virtuos believed those global use cases could be translated into new automation opportunities for Indian enterprises.
“Maximizer has proven expertise in the CRM industry by delivering its software to more than 100,000 companies worldwide. Virtuos can harness these global CRM use cases to automate processes for many more organizations.”
The newly released CRM 10 platform, Virtuos believed, could address both small and medium businesses and larger enterprise organizations.
GE Healthcare: An Early Enterprise Proof Point
The Maximizer relationship wasn't built on proposition alone.
Virtuos had already gained significant hands-on experience implementing the platform.
One of its most important early deployments was at GE Healthcare.
- The implementation extended across more than a dozen GE Healthcare sales locations throughout India.
- 0+ Sales Offices
- More than 100 sales and service users were supported by the CRM environment.
- 0+ Users
- Virtuos implemented both sales and customer-service capabilities.
- Sales + Service
- The CRM platform was tightly integrated with GE Healthcare's real-time inventory-management environment.
- Real-Time Integration
Connecting CRM to the Business Behind It
This integration was particularly significant.
Rather than operating as an isolated customer database, the CRM environment connected sales and service activity with operational inventory information.
That enabled teams to use CRM information to:
- Forecast sales
- Plan manufacturing requirements
- Plan imports of medical and healthcare products
- Manage customer and service activities
- Execute orders
It demonstrated an important principle that would continue to influence Virtuos' enterprise work:
CRM creates considerably greater value when customer processes are connected with the operational systems that run the business.
The GE Healthcare implementation therefore became an important early reference for Virtuos' growing Maximizer practice.
From Software Implementation to CRM Transformation
The Maximizer partnership helped broaden the scope of what Virtuos could offer.
The opportunity wasn't simply to install CRM software.
Virtuos could bring together:
- CRM Strategy
- Business Process Automation
- Sales Automation
- Customer Service
- Marketing
- Data Migration
- Enterprise Integration
- Private Cloud Deployment
- Mobility
That combination positioned the company to work with organizations at different stages of CRM maturity.
An Alliance Built in Virtuos' First Month
The timing makes the partnership especially significant within the Virtuos story.
18 Jan 2008
Virtuos Solutions incorporated.
25 Jan 2008
Major enterprise CRM engagement secured.
11 Feb 2008
Virtuos formally announces its Maximizer partnership.
GE Healthcare
A major enterprise implementation already demonstrates the team's capabilities.
Virtuos was still in its first month as an incorporated company.
Yet the foundations of its emerging business model were already becoming visible:
- Global technology partnerships.
- Specialist CRM expertise.
- Enterprise implementation capability.
- Integration with mission-critical systems.
- And an early conviction around Cloud.
Born in the Cloud
Virtuos described itself during this period as a company “born in the cloud.”
That phrase captured an important part of the company's early technology philosophy.
Cloud computing was not yet the default enterprise deployment model it would eventually become. But Virtuos was already exploring how CRM could operate across traditional infrastructure, private-cloud environments and externally hosted platforms.
The Maximizer relationship fitted naturally into that strategy.
It gave Virtuos another platform through which it could help organizations modernize the way they managed:
Sales. Service. Marketing. Customer Relationships.
From the Archives
February 2008 — Building the Virtuos Technology Ecosystem
Virtuos entered 2008 as a newly incorporated CRM and cloud-computing company.
Rather than attempting to build every technology itself, the company pursued alliances with established international software vendors whose platforms could be combined with Virtuos consulting, implementation and integration expertise.
Maximizer was one of those formative relationships.
The partnership also illustrates how quickly the young company was assembling the ingredients of its enterprise technology business.
Within weeks of incorporation, Virtuos had begun combining global software products, enterprise customers, consulting expertise and cloud-oriented thinking into a distinctive CRM proposition.
The company was new.
The ambition wasn't.
