Interview with Manish Choudhary, Senior VP, Pitney Bowes India: ‘Simplifying Commerce for the SMBs is the main aim’

In talks with PC Quest Manish Choudhary, Senior Vice President, Global SMB Products and Strategy & Chairman, India at Pitney Bowes India puts his views on the initiatives taken by the company for the mid market sector in India

What are the different products

Manish Choudhary, Senior Vice President, Global SMB Products and Strategy & Chairman, Pitney Bowes India

 and service offerings from Pitney Bowes and are they categorized for different market verticals?

Pitney Bowes is a global technology company that offers a range of innovative products and solutions that enable commerce in the areas of customer information management, location intelligence, customer engagement, shipping and mailing, and global e-commerce in approximately 100 countries around the world.

We are a 100-year old start-up that invented an industry in our first century and now we are transforming our legacy business to become a model of success for clients across a wide range of industries.

Pitney Bowes combines the strength of physical mail and shipping with digital experiences to deliver more value to its clients, ranging from 90% of Fortune 500 to one million+ small and medium-sized businesses.

Banks, telcos, insurance firms and a range of other businesses use our technologies to support them in their digital transformation, so that they can provide digital interactive and personalized experiences to their customers. Our products enable more than 250

retailers, brands and online marketplaces sell to more than 6.5 million buyers in more than 220 countries and territories, using more than 74 currencies.

What are your offerings for SMBs and how they are leveraging your platform for business growth? Have you identified them in clusters and if so on how many you are working on?

Just like the rest of us, small and medium businesses too are looking for ways to optimize business processes and provide a premiere customer experience. Our one million+ SMB clients ranging from insurance agents, healthcare professionals to lawyers, retailers and

others rely on Pitney Bowes to help them remove complexities from commerce by streamlining their shipping and mailing operations. Our latest product innovation, SendPro-C Series enables offices to select the ideal sending option for parcels, letters and flats, take advantage of full tracking and delivery savings across multiple carriers, and access technologies right from the integrated Google Android operating system. The Pitney Bowes Commerce Cloud provides access to many new Partner Program applications and useful integrations between Pitney Bowes and partner offerings including: Google G Suite, Yext, Acquisio, DocuSign and Nimble CRM. For example, think of a mid-sized legal services firm that needs to ship out periodic documents to clients. By using Pitney Bowes SendPro C-Series, the firm can manage the calendar, make payments, ship and mail directly from calendar appointments and manage customer relationships at the click of a button.

How is Pitney Bowes solving the local challenges faced by SMBs in India with its Technology and Products? Also, what kind of traction you are getting from them?

We work with several Government agencies, Banks, Retailers and Educational institutes and help them address their shipping, mailing and document messaging needs.

Through our technology and solutions in global e-commerce and software, we are also enabling small exporters and retailers to cater to global markets by removing all complexities of duties, taxes and localization.

How is Pitney Bowes reinventing SMB business through Open Innovation?

Innovation is in our DNA. Pitney Bowes has been focused on leveraging open innovation platforms to provide SMB clients with new ways to grow their customers, manage their practice, streamline their operations and enhance productivity.

Earlier this year, Pitney Bowes hosted a Global SMB Hackathon with the vision to bring one million developers to one million SMB clients. The Hackathon saw participation from more than 2,000 developers from major technology firms who submitted 65 technology applications and solutions in several areas including mailing and shipping, global ecommerce, and payments. We collaborated with 20+ tech partners for APIs and technologies including NASSCOM, HackerEarth, Microsoft Xamarin and Azure, Zoho, Freshdesk, Algorithmia and Digital-Ocean.

The Global Hackathon is a great example of innovators coming together to develop on Pitney Bowes technology and to build a strong ecosystem for open innovation. We are in the process of building an integrated Global SMB Partner Program and plan to launch an SMB Starter Kit which will enable all developers and partners to create solutions for our clients, quickly.

SMBs are transforming fast. How you are helping mid-market achieving that target?

SMBs are constantly looking for new ways to serve customers, market their offerings and grow their business. Pitney Bowes is providing SMB customers with a new value proposition by creating joint solutions with large tech companies and innovators globally to help simplify complexities across the value chain of commerce.

For example, Pitney Bowes enables small retailers selling through e-commerce to sell globally through multiple e-commerce portals, acquire customers, manage their operations efficiently and ultimately grow their business.

What are the trends you are seeing in 2018?

SMBs across industries are looking at new ways to target and acquire customers and grow their business. Machine Learning and AI applications can be used to create relevant and personalized experiences for customers.

For example, SMBs like real estate agents, lawyers, financial institutions that need to send out periodic and regular communication would benefit from automated shipping and mailing. During the recent Pitney Bowes Global SMB hackathon, a solution was created to help SMBs schedule shipping and communication directly from the Google calendar. This application saves shipping cost by recommending most efficient shipping option for our target delivery date. Sophistication in ML and AI technology with continue to provide SMBs with business intelligence tools and the data they need that will help with grow their businesses.