One on One with Ravi Ramachandran, Vice President, Strategic Account Management, AppLabs

“As the world's largest Software Testing and Quality Management company, we are viewed by our enterprise customers as thought leaders and experts as in our field. Customers have a tremendous amount of faith in our comprehensive Quality Management capabilities - the depth of our people, processes, methodologies and  metrics that we bring to the table, thereby setting high standards for excellence."

1. Tell us a little about your organization, Strategic Account Management and how it fits in with AppLabs's overall go-to market strategy.

Strategic Account Management is a group that is focused on growing and serving the needs of our existing customers. Our goal is to build long term, bi-directional customer relationships by paying close attention to their business needs and adding measurable value by executing flawlessly on each engagement. As AppLabs continues to grow, we feel it is imperative to have a dedicated focus on our existing accounts, as much as it is important to acquire new customers. The level of attention we provide our customers with, both small and large, is greatly appreciated. We have received very positive feedback from our clients which is reflected in our consistently high Customer Satisfaction Ratings.

2. In your view, what are some of the primary reasons for enterprise customers to continue engaging with AppLabs?

First and foremost, I would attribute our increasing traction with enterprise customers to our relentless customer focus, flexible and partnership driven approach that promotes long term, mutually beneficial customer relationships. As a nimble company with a relatively flat organization, our customers like the fact that they and have direct access to our senior management. We hear time and again that these factors are important particularly as customers engage with us on larger scale multi-year initiatives that span the enterprise.

As the world's largest Software Testing and Quality Management company, we are viewed by our enterprise customers as thought leaders and experts as in our field. Customers have a tremendous amount of faith in our comprehensive Quality Management capabilities - the depth of our people, processes, methodologies and metrics that we bring to the table, thereby setting high standards for excellence.

We have continued to raise the bar by hiring industry experts to build deep domain knowledge and also introducing domain-centric processes and tools that is increasingly positioning AppLabs as an inseparable business partner. This greatly impacts the goals, outcomes and overall performance of businesses. We feel that the confidence that our customers have placed in AppLabs is a key reason why we have been successful in shifting the mindset of enterprise customers and moving them from a piecemeal approach to Quality Management, to a holistic and proactive approach with measurable business outcomes.

3. Looking forward to 2010, what do you think will drive demand for AppLabs's Testing and Quality Management services?

Even for those of us who are not economists, it is obvious that we are in a recessionary environment, which has led to many businesses being impacted adversely and IT projects being cancelled or put on hold. However, many strategic enterprise IT initiatives, are still moving forward, albeit at a more measured pace. Earlier in the year, customers had tightened their purse strings, we are now noticing a pent up demand for our services. We see a significant interest in creating centralized software testing capability across business and functional units to drive consistent test measurement and process that improves overall quality and reduce the cost of development and deployment. For ISVs, their products are their lifeblood so enhancements and release cycles must continue in order for them to stay competitive. They simply cannot afford to short change their QA processes as a simple oversight could have serious repercussions. So independent testing providers like AppLabs will continue to be an invaluable partner to such customers. Earlier this year, Gartner Research estimated that the global market size of outsourced QA & Testing services is around $6.1 billion. We feel that we have only scratched the surface and are confident that we are well placed to take advantage of this growth opportunity.