In an age where people are being asked to do more with less, a capable AI solution is able to automate mundane, tactical tasks so that procurement teams have more bandwidth to add strategic value.
MEDIA 7: Please tell us more about your role at Zycus and your overall professional journey.
AMIT SHAH: I am the Chief Marketing Officer at Zycus. My job is very simple, yet exciting as it allows a great balance between flexing my left brain and my right brain! I am responsible for building a mind-share and then translating it into a market-share in our focus markets. I also lead adjacent functions including Pricing & Commercials Desk and Sale Enablement. I bring approximately two decades of experience from across fast-growing technology, banking, and strategy consulting industries. In my last assignment, I was the Managing Director at a London-based B2B SaaS unicorn.
M7: There has been a lot of confusion over AI in the market. As an AI leader, what strategy are you adopting while reaching out to your target audience?
AS: That’s right. There is a lot of confusion as every vendor claims to have an AI-powered solution. Chatbots and RPA are AI applications, but AI has to be more transformative. In my experience, most clients are sophisticated enough to understand that AI is a means and not an end in itself. Zycus has been a pioneer in AI, with over 2 decades of legacy in delivering value to our clients using AI-powered solutions, having processed around 3 trillion dollars' worth of spend. We are a category creator - “Cognitive Procurement” is our holistic approach to using AI to help procurement and finance teams do more from less across the entire Source to Pay cycle.
We have a 3 pronged strategy of:
1. Awareness building – Zycus consistently shares a practitioners-perspective to help prospects appreciate the art of the possible.
2. Practical tool kits – Which helps prospects plan their AI adoption roadmap
3. Experiential marketing – The transformative magic of AI needs to be seen, real-time! No clickable wireframes and futuristic slide decks. We hand over the AI offerings to prospects for them to test the offering with real data, real documents, in real-time. Experience the magic of Merlin!
The use of marketing tech across all aspects of marketing is a key initiative for 2021. We are working with very innovative mar-tech start-ups, which helps with intent, engagement, conversations, analytics, etc.
M7: Zycus has been serving the majority of the verticals. Is there any specific vertical that you would like to focus on from the marketing perspective?
AS: Zycus connected the dots ahead of the industry and even analysts; that customers will increasingly consolidate their entire S2P with 1 vendor as inter-module synergies are crucial to delivering on the desired savings.
So while we have been a recognized leader in the strategic sourcing solutions (upstream modules) by Gartner and Forrester for a long time now, over the last decade our focus on offering a truly integrated and comprehensive Source to Pay suite has paid off. Zycus offers a sector-agnostic enterprise-grade solution, and the core functionalities are flexible and scalable to address most industry verticals. Zycus caters to Fortune 500 clients across manufacturing, pharma, FMCG, Food & Beverages, Chemicals, Banking & Financial Services, Retail, Oil & Gas, Energy, Real Estate, etc.
M7: When it comes to AI, how do you really define value offering?
AS: When it comes to AI, a value offering is one that seamlessly integrates with core solutions to give the user an effortless experience. In an age where people are being asked to do more with less, a capable AI solution is able to automate mundane, tactical tasks so that procurement teams have more bandwidth to add strategic value. With AI, a rigorous and real-time analysis is possible at scale. A value offering should ideally enable firms to leverage this intelligence across operations and then use the derived actionable insights as guides to add value.
M7: Today, most companies face challenges in monetizing innovation when it comes to technology adoption. What suggestions do you have for such companies?
AS: The “willingness to pay” is a key reflection of the inherent value that a product or a solution to the table. If an innovation helps generate value, then the customer would be willing to pay for it. Period.
If there is no real value, no amount of marketing or sales push can create a sustainable business model. Stay true to making your customers successful, and your company has a good chance of succeeding.
With virtual work from anywhere having become the new norm, paper trails and manual dependencies in procurement mean inefficiencies and loss of savings.
M7: How do you see the Indian market as a potential for your business?
AS: Zycus is head quartered in New Jersey and is a global organization catering to global enterprises with sales and services presence across over 20 countries including the US & Canada, the UK, France, Germany, the Nordics, Benelux, MEA, SEA, Australia and New Zealand, in addition to India. India is growing fast, and heading to complete digitization even faster. Our offerings are well-positioned to serve this market’s needs. Organizations are expanding at breakneck speed and with that, their procurement functions are too. And they’re looking out for digital transformation options that can help. The Public sector is incidentally way ahead in India given some of the path-breaking initiatives by the Government to bring transparency and governance in eProcurement. Also, with a country as large as India, sustainability needs to be a core strategic focus for organizations who want to future-proof their procurement. And we are bringing conversations of sustainability to the forefront; helping firms embrace sustainable procurement faster with our intelligent tech-based solutions.
M7: Considering the current pandemic situation, how do you see your offerings are positioned to serve the potential customers?
AS: With virtual work from anywhere having become the new norm, paper trails and manual dependencies in procurement mean inefficiencies and loss of savings. The pandemic has definitely provided tailwinds for a faster transition to 100% digitized procurement, and we are positioned just right to help firms fully eliminate manual dependencies.
There are two very important aspects helping us ensure full digitization. First, is our offering’s UI– which is very intuitive and easy to use, leading to more and more adoption from internal stakeholders and suppliers. A related point in the user experience is our ability to seamlessly integrate across Zycus modules and with clients’ internal systems, ERPs, etc. And second, is Cognitive Procurement, which consists of core AI capabilities across the S2P process that eliminate manual repetitive tasks and also offer actionable insights to the user. These two core-functionalities help us ensure that a firm’s journey to full digitization is seamless and that they’re able to reap maximum benefits from it by bringing more spending under management and achieving high user adoption.
Moreover, the pandemic has also created an environment of increased risk, volatility, and supply chain disruptions. Zycus is able to help organizations anticipate and better mitigate these risks by letting them leverage organization-wide data, increasing the visibility into all stages of the S2P cycle, and finally, by churning out actionable insights that can act as definitive guides in these uncertain times.
M7: Would you like to throw some light on your marketing strategy to reach out to new audiences?
AS: For Zycus, content is the core of all our marketing initiatives. While we focus on traditional channels like email campaigns, LinkedIn, ABM, Influencer Marketing, and Virtual Events, we have also found great success with innovative partner marketing. The use of marketing tech across all aspects of marketing is a key initiative for 2021. We are working with very innovative mar-tech start-ups, which helps with intent, engagement, conversations, analytics, etc. Finally, inspired by the runaway success of our flagship event, Horizon– which went virtual for the first time in Feb 2021; we are bringing it back later this year in October, in a bigger and more power-packed format. Horizon offers the best of Zycus to its customers and prospects with over 1,100 delegates from over 500 companies across 22 countries.