Over the past few years, a number of SaaS-based organizations have been touching new boundaries. With remote working on the rise, enterprises are using innovative SaaS-based solutions from startups to remotely train their employees on new software and processes to increase process and cost efficiency. One such company Whatfix offers solutions to enterprises create customized, real-time, in-app guides and tutorials aimed at effectively getting better results from complex offerings such as CRM, ERP and HR systems. In a recent interaction with CXOToday, Khadim Batti, Co-founder and CEO of India and US-based Whatfix shares insights on how the company’s SaaS-based digital adoption platform is helping enterprises during this time.
CXOToday: Tell us something about Whatfix and your key offerings for the enterprise.
Khadim Batti: Founded in 2014, our founding team quickly realized that there was a universal need for many software solutions to guide users through their usage from start to finish. What began with two small customers has now been fully embraced by a significant number of the Fortune 1000 and the creation of an entirely new category, Digital Adoption. The journey continues now as we seek to continually refine and apply the Whatfix platform anywhere our customers operate. For example, our universally compliant platform overlays on top of sophisticated applications such as CRMs and ERPs, and provides in-app guidance and instruction on how to use them effectively. This guidance is personalized, context-aware, and provides an incredibly fast time-to-ROI when factoring in the budget and hours saved in the process of fully engaging your employees.
CXOToday: What are some of the key customer concerns that Whatfix is addressing given the COVID-19 crisis?
Khadim Batti: There are two strong considerations here: first, many organizations are looking to show increased efficiency and speed to maintain their own momentum during this tumultuous time. There is no longer the luxury of a long onboarding process, or a less-than-ideal usage rate for critical tools such as CRM solutions. Our offering helps our customers run faster, especially now when they need to more than ever. Second, remote working environments are a long-term reality for many organizations. For many workers, that means less access to your fellow employees, and more reliance on yourself. Our offerings are explicitly designed to help individual employees learn, grow, and use the tools at their disposal more efficiently, and that’s making a major impact right now.
CXOToday: What are some of the current trends in the market with respect to digital adoption platforms?
Khadim Batti: Right now, the watchword is growth: we are growing exponentially year-over-year because companies understand the value of a fully adopted, activated workforce. As a leader in this new category, we feel that it is our responsibility to continue to drive innovation and progression within it.
CXOToday: What are the key challenges in the industry right now and what is the strategy to ride through this crisis?
Khadim Batti: Our main focus now is in continuing to build our category and allow enterprise organizations to embrace digital adoption. The issue of product onboarding has been around for decades; it is our challenge and responsibility to educate stakeholders on the solution to the questions they’ve been wrestling with this entire time. Through in-app guidance, walkthroughs, and learn-as-you-go offerings, our goal is to protect the investment our customers make in their tech stack by ensuring it is used to its fullest potential.
CXOToday: What are the recently added features? Are there any updates in the pipeline?
Khadim Batti: We are constantly evolving our product offering to better refine and suit the needs of our customers. While we currently primarily operate within sophisticated web applications, it’s undeniable the amount of enterprise-class business that occurs on desktop apps and even mobile: that is where we’ll be providing some very satisfying updates soon, all in the name of our customer-first mentality.
CXOToday: Please share some information on the India operations of Whatfix.
Khadim Batti: Whatfix’s India operation is based in Bangalore, where we still hold a significant portion of our employee base. However, our customers are nearly 70% in North America — we as a team have been built from the ground up to be flexible, fast, and above all focused on our customers. After all, we offer a platform based on guidance and adoption: it is in our DNA to be simple to work with.
CXOToday: What is your growth strategy? How does the road ahead look like?
Khadim Batti: Our focus now is on the enterprise space; large organizations need to fully empower their workforces and ensure that they are completely comfortable, and effective, at using their entire tech stack. Digital Adoption Platforms aren’t centered on a particular industry or region — every organization faces these challenges, and we are the solution.
