Betting High on APAC Market Date:   Thursday , May 31, 2012 QlikTech, a provider of business discovery (BI) solution for verticals like banking, retail, manufacturing etc is meddling with bunch of activities for Indian market. QlikTech's powerful, accessible Business Discovery solution bridges the gap between traditional business intelligence solutions and standalone office productivity applications. Its QlikView Business Discovery platform enables intuitive user-driven analysis that can be implemented in days or weeks rather than months, years, or not at all. In a candid chat with Phillip Beniac, Regional Vice President APAC, QlikTech, talks about the growth strategy in India and globally. Beniac is responsible for spearheading Asia-Pacific sales and solutions initiatives to ensure customer success and drive continued "Business Discovery" leadership in the market. Industry Perspective When we discuss about this, we are talking about Qliktech's future and not just a single product. Looking back into our history, we have spent a favorable time in Asia pacific and Japan. The opportunities that came along with Qlicktech were phenomenal. I could probably give you many reasons for that: Qlicktech has been very successful in Europe and North America. When I joined, I did see the emergence of our products within the market and I saw this as an opportunity that was bought in to be a part of the Asia pacific focus. Predominantly, people called it an international market where all the markets in the Europe and North America were clubbed into one area. As I was then invited to build the Asia Pacific footprint, we could hence, bring more partners and staff on board to really help service the growing number of customers that we have in the market. We had to build the infrastructure not just in terms of sales, also expert services as we target more enterprise accounts and also the partner communities by making sure the partners are enabled to drive successful implementations of the product. There has been a major drive towards industry specific targeting and we would be doing the same thing in the Asia Pacific region as well being very receptive in terms of the technology and capabilities. Products and Industry Focus Our focus is on the financial services space which has been remarkable in North America and Europe. If we think about the infrastructural investments that the banks and insurance companies have made, the operational environments to the warehousing, essentially these banks find that a group of individuals need to understand more about self serving analysis and traditional way of approach is not very supportive in this kind of market. Hence, we see a huge opportunity in the Indian banking sector. We have end users here who really understand the self serving analysis of data who are actually more receptive to changes and manage their own environments. Concerns in the Industry Productivity, performance and elements of these products, traditionally did not service the needs of individual users as much as they could and these are some of the concerns in the industry today. When economies are going down, we have to sit down and think seriously on what has to be done to get things better. Industrial dynamics have changed dramatically. When these dynamics are incorporated into sectors like manufacturing, retail, products and services, price sensitivity and competition becomes very important, especially when internet is a channel for experienced shopping. Manufacturing is very much present in India subject to global pressures. These are markets which are fundamentally important. Everybody is putting themselves in a more product driven area rather than just focusing on services. A lot of traction was found in terms of customers using Qlikview as their tool on top of their own IP. This is a very important development for us which are specific to India unlike other Asia Pacific countries. Competition Most often, people think our software providers to be our competition, however it is not true. Working with them, we see it complimentary. Therefore, 100 percent of our accounts have SAP, Oracle or components of IBM and so on. So, the competition is really not just about who has more features. We are actually servicing our business community. This could be considered a competition from a traditional stand point but not now. Now, it is a different level of user s to actually experience business discovery. What I think the competition is that people or group within the organization, to really deploy the right capabilities is the biggest issue for us. It is about how we organize ourselves to be more successful and how we reach that community that needs something like Qlikview. The challenge we see is that suddenly there is a huge demand of resources and hence see many players in the same market. There is a demand to be supplied from India and this is a major challenge for us to meet. Even though, we see this as a temporary phase of resource shortage and look forward to overcome in no time. Back then, it was difficult to find a solution unlike the present. This is a real time world and the systems need to be there. Change is a very interesting thing and Qliktech as a company is all about change and changing perceptions. Business Intelligence and Analytics the buzz word Business intelligence has been transforming and currently we can see advanced level of business analytics model. Qlikview is unique in its own way because it is actually empowering people to explore and discover information from the data they have to make decisions. There is a gap in two different areas —one that looked at the past and the other that looks at the future. Earlier, it used to be spreadsheets and sending emails. This collaborative availability of data and information here talks about mobility. As the market is opening up to more options, the data fragmentation occurs and we are in turn inheriting it. Moreover the senior management in Indian companies has to take regulatory compliance as a very serious issue. Roadmap ahead Qliktech is growing fast and we see a huge traction in Asia Pacific region contributes a significant amount to Qliktech's global revenue. The infrastructure, the people and the partners everything needs to be in place for us to not just make a significant growth but also sustain it. India being a prime market, not just in an international perspective, but also a local perspective we will have a significant development here.