SKET is an AI-first SaaS voice automation company. Its suite of speech and language solutions enables enterprises to automate their call centre operations. With over 10 million hours of training data, its product - Vernacular Intelligent Voice Assistant (VIVA) can currently respond in over 16+ languages, covering over 160+ dialects and replicating human-like conversations. Skit serves a variety of enterprise clients across diverse sectors such as banking and financial services, including insurance, securities and NBFCs, food and beverage, e-commerce, automotive, and travel and tourism. A few prominent clients include Axis Bank, Hathway, Porter and Barbeque Nation. In May 2020, the Bangalore-based start-up secured its Series A funding of USD 5.1 million and recently raised a Series B round of USD 23 million, and has grown to over 150 employees. The company has been featured as one of the top-notch start-ups in the Cisco Launchpad's Cohort 6 and is a part of the World Economic Forum's Global Innovators Community. The voice AI leader has also been listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia start-ups 2021 for its remarkable industry innovation and has recently been awarded 'Tech Startup of the Year' in Artificial Intelligence 2021 by Entrepreneur India, further underscoring its market dominance and unparalleled expertise. The company is now expanding in the United States and Southeast Asian markets in a bid to take its unique platform to global enterprises.

You are the CEO of the company and are looking at this objectively. You decide that building a platform is the right direction to go for. However, you have to convince your board members about the same too.

Moving on with the case, it was also lately noticed that the conversion rates have been dropping steadily for the last few weeks, while those of the companys competitors are increasing. Having realised that consumer behaviour towards investing was not an issue, as its competitors- the other Skitoice automation companies were gaining more users, the company decided to intervene before it was too late. The company board, on the advice of its investors, began solving the more pressing issue of customer retention due to reasons other than the lack of a technology problem. They realised their boat had two holes. They had already started work to fix one, by building the voice technology platform, but they were yet to identify the second hole.

They then realised that they needed more data as well as the ability to send targeted emails to those who had been almost on the verge of signing up, but did not, and lure them back to the company.

An ERP implementation was seen as the obvious choice to solve the problem, as it would provide them with the requisite data as well as combine email marketing features and send out targeted emails to help them reduce the onboarding decision made by the user.

The only difficulty should be migrating the existing information and data that they already possess to the software, once it is live. Hence, making the transfer easier would also be one of the priorities.

Now that it has been finalised that an ERP implementation is to happen, you, as the CEO of the company have to answer the following questions:

• Should you make the ERP software from scratch or buy it as a COTS?
• Should you host the ERP data on in-house servers or over the cloud?

Remember while answering that most of your IT talent is being utilised to build the Voice automation platform.

Question 2 (Single question)

15 marks

Prepare a document to be shared with your CTO to explain your choice for both of these options:

• Make or buy?
• Inhouse hosting or cloud? Moving on with the case, it was also lately noticed that the conversion rates have been dropping steadily for the last few weeks, while those of the companys competitors are increasing. Having realised that consumer behaviour towards investing was not an issue, as its competitors- the other Skitoice automation companies were gaining more users, the company decided to intervene before it was too late. The company board, on the advice of its investors, began solving the more pressing issue of customer retention due to reasons other than the lack of a technology problem. They realised their boat had two holes. They had already started work to fix one, by building the voice technology platform, but they were yet to identify the second hole.

  They then realised that they needed more data as well as the ability to send targeted emails to those who had been almost on the verge of signing up, but did not, and lure them back to the company.

  An ERP implementation was seen as the obvious choice to solve the problem, as it would provide them with the requisite data as well as combine email marketing features and send out targeted emails to help them reduce the onboarding decision made by the user.

  The only difficulty should be migrating the existing information and data that they already possess to the software, once it is live. Hence, making the transfer easier would also be one of the priorities.

  Now that it has been finalised that an ERP implementation is to happen, you, as the CEO of the company have to answer the following questions:

  • Should you make the ERP software from scratch or buy it as a COTS?
  • Should you host the ERP data on in-house servers or over the cloud?

  Remember while answering that most of your IT talent is being utilised to build the Voice automation platform.

  Question 2 (Single question)

  15 marks

  Prepare a document to be shared with your CTO to explain your choice for both of these options:

  • Make or buy?
  • Inhouse hosting or cloud?