When Redickaa Subrammanian and her business partner founded Resulticks six years back, she firmly believed that their platform would be a game-changer. Her faith was not misplaced - today, she finds herself shuttling between client meetings in the United States, South-east Asia and Australia. Resulticks has caught the attention of brands across continents for the data and tech-backed solutions it brings to the table. “We will be the platform of choice for customer engagement,” Subrammanian confidently replies when quizzed about where she sees Resulticks 10 years from now. To give credit where it’s due, it was no mean feat for the platform to make a place for itself in a market dominated by big global players. It now boasts of an impressive list of clients including leading brands from the BFSI, Retail, Telecom, Luxury Goods and Healthcare verticals.
In an interview with IMPACT, Redickaa Subrammanian, Founder and CEO of Resulticks, explains why the platform is a one-stop shop for omni-channel marketing solutions.
ABOUT Resulticks
Resulticks was founded in 2014 in Singapore, and launched in India at the same time
Headquartered in Singapore, Resulticks currently operates in three major markets - South East Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines), Australia and the United States
In India, it has offices in Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru
Its list of 200+ customers include leading brands from the BFSI, Retail, Telecom, Luxury Goods and Healthcare verticals
Resulticks is part of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multi-channel Marketing Hubs
Q] What prompted you to start Resulticks? Could you take us through your journey?
I founded Resulticks along with my business partner in 2014. Prior to that, we ran a digital agency called Interakt Digital Group in 2004 in Singapore. Before Interakt, I was with a large tech company, where I was running interactive engineering, basically bringing design, technology and data together, to deliver on business outcomes.
While running Interakt, we realised that maybe we have something that can literally change the game. So, in 2012, we made a transition and completely stopped our agency services. We took all our engineers and built tools from ground up, which could cater to today’s digital need of multiple channels, multiple devices, and data which involves multiple identities.
We realized the only place to do it and to start with is data. We needed to get the data layer appropriate, and to take care of scale, security, privacy, and all of those elements. Not only enterprise data, but we had to combine it with outside data in order to build that profile, give the power to the enterprise in the market and help them know where to reach out to the consumer. Also, exactly when the consumer wants to be reached out to and through which channel.
Today, it’s all about real-time customer engagement. Our agency experience, our complete tech experience and building Resulticks from ground up has made us come out of nowhere in the last six years. We didn’t think we were competing with Adobe or IBM or Oracle, but we were just passionate about what we were doing. Before we could turn around, brands started recognizing our expertise. They started recognizing us for our simplicity, vis-à-vis other competing solutions in the market. Brands felt that we understood what they wanted as marketers, that got us the recognition and before we knew it, we became Resulticks, a global entity and a power to reckon with.
Q] How is Resulticks helping brands optimise their marketing spends?
It all starts with data. None of our competitors have a data layer built in as part of the solution. So, the first part is what we call today CDP, or customer data platform. Data could be lying anywhere, but did you look at identity resolution? That part is the first part that we do very well. We look at your enterprise data, which could be your website, social properties, mobile app, CRM, basically data sitting anywhere, and combine it with a partner affiliate. So, combining your enterprise data with third party data, second party, and then empowering you to start to know where to go and reach. That is the second part where the entire journey-building happens, as well as orchestration across all channels.
Q] What differentiates Resulticks from the others, what would you say is your USP?
We drive business outcomes. We are very attribution-focused because we have three major capabilities that we bring to the table and we are built from ground up. First is the CDP, which is the customer data platform. Second is the omni-channel orchestration in real time and ability to handle data at scale and security at the security levels that are required. Thirdly insights, which enable you to learn so that you can continue adjusting it. This helps target and re-target accurately to make it an individualized experience. That’s really our differentiation.
Q] How is Resulticks helping brands in their journey of personalisation?
Resulticks is helping brands realize their omni-channel customer engagement strategy, across multiple dimensions that includes real-time communications, contextual conversations as well as personalization. In fact, deep personalization… beyond just name, beyond just your last transaction value. Today, personalization itself can be done on multiple dimensions - your location, your time, your device, your preferences. Resulticks takes these multiple dimensions and then makes it contextual and relevant, we call it individualization. This is only possible if the data streaming happens in real time. Most of the time, the data comes in two days after the transaction is done, then it is manually downloaded and processed, then it takes another two days to segment the data and send the relevant communication to the customer. This is opportunity lost. What we are trying to do as Resulticks is, to bring real-time customer engagement, where as soon as the data is available, one can segment and send communication within even 10 to 15 minutes.
Q] How do you also ensure that, while leveraging data for personalisation, it is not intrusive for customers?
That’s the most important, because at the end of the day, all of this is possible only if the data is allowed to be looked at. So long as I am giving an experience, which is not going to look too invasive, and frighten the customer, it is important. Brands are recognizing this. Today, even when we look at transactional data, people want context and relevance. I think it’s about how you execute it in the tactical aspect that’s going to drive where the customers don’t feel brands are being intrusive. Customers don’t want to feel like somebody is constantly monitoring them. But at the end of the day, while that exists, we also complain a lot as human beings when we don’t get the experience the way we want. So, it has to be a balance between the two. That’s where it’s about how the data is leveraged, exercising the highest levels of security, where the person wants and loves it, that’s when you are going and giving them that experience.
Q] Could you share the growth numbers for Resulticks since its inception?
We’ve been growing on an average of 300% year-on-year, probably because we came from nowhere. From a start-up, we transformed to become a corporate only last year. We’ve expanded globally because we’re a company born out of Asia, but have gone on to be recognized as a global player. We are one of the top 20 platforms where Gartner has recognized us. They have a Quadrant which they call the multi-channel digital marketing hub, which means they bring every aspect of digital customer engagement into one solution. In that Hub Quadrant, we are the only Asian company present. Others are established players like Adobe, IBM and SAS. Then you have some of the niche players like Redpoint, and others who have come out from the US and from Europe.
The way Uber changed the transportation world, we’re going to change the world of seamless customer engagement. Our journey has seen us expanding from Asia to go into the US, the whole of Southeast Asia and Australia. We are strengthening our position this year in all of these markets. Within the next 18 months, we will expand into LATAM, then Japan, China and Korea. We want to do what others took 15 years to do, we have to try to do it in 7-8 years. It’s an aggressive run, but it’s about how smartly you do it. It’s brain over brawn. It’s also about how ready customers are, and which markets are ready. If you can do business in Asia, you can do business in any other part of the world.
Q] So, Resulticks took on the big tech boys and won?
Unknowingly, we took them on but it’s been a great experience. We have to give all credit to our customers who recognised that we could compete with those players. We did not even think so. We were only very passionate about what we were doing. But today, we are typically competing with the players, who I don’t want to name.
Q] What is your future strategy for the Indian market?
Our focus in the last six years has been more towards the enterprise customers. But there is a huge opportunity in the SME, mid-tier world. SMEs, that may not have large marketing teams or big agencies to support them, but want to leverage the power of technology. So, how do we empower them with tech such as ours, which enables them to bring the data together? Orchestration analytics has a lot of potential.
WHAT DOES THE COMPANY OFFER?
Resulticks is a real-time, big-data-driven marketing cloud solution built from the ground up by experts in marketing, technology and business strategy to deliver top-line growth. Outcomes-focused and enabled by a customer data blockchain, Resulticks equips brands to make a transformational leap to true omni-channel engagement. With its AI-powered, customer-centric approach and attribution at the segment-of-one level, Resulticks is changing how brands worldwide reach, acquire, and retain satisfied customers.
Q] What is the current state of omni-channel marketing in India? What are the challenges?
India and Asia are getting more savvy with omni-channel marketing. They are discovering the best technology that can deliver the kind of experience that customers are looking for. As they get ready, they have many platforms to choose from, as it’s a highly crowded place. Sometimes, that means up to three months of just evaluating and trying to find the right partner. Whereas, if you go to the more evolved markets, like America, they’ve already had a head start of five years in terms of omni-channel marketing. They’ve already seen three rounds of platform changes leading to a certain amount of fatigue in the market - probably due to the technology for these platforms not being ready enough, combined with a cumbersome user interface and non-delivery of promised results. In this atmosphere, our platform is seen as a breath of fresh air.
In India, the customers are all ready for omni-channel marketing. The challenges from the brand’s perspective, are usually about –‘What do I do with data?’, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to come out of my legacy systems.’ Those are the questions that they typically ask, because they realize that to get to a higher level of omni-channel maturity, data is the first critical pillar. If we can get that right, then the rest of it becomes much easier.
Q] What is your advice to brands as they chart their digital journey?
I will tell them not to go in with an urge to do it just because your competition has started doing something on a particular new channel. I don’t think that should be the way because what your peer may be doing, may be for a particular case which you may not even be ready for. Every brand should really look at it from a business growth perspective, work backwards from that to see where are the digital channels... ‘How do customers engage with me as a brand?’ Then, from there, work in to see which are the solution stacks that are going to help them remain lean, nimble, fast to market and which can give business. Simplicity is the key. I would say, don’t try to conquer the entire universe, but try to take on specific battles and get your quick wins through that. Businesses need to prepare themselves for that.
Q] Where do you see Resulticks 10 years from now?
We will be the platform of choice for customer engagement.
