A technology-driven learning solutions company, enParadigm is focused on transforming performance by helping people get better at the hidden aspects of their jobs, which usually takes them years to know about. “At enParadigm, everything we do is geared towards building employee capability to drive business outcomes. We help organisations grow by enabling their front-line workforce to become sales ready, and delivering high-quality learning experiences that have zero-degree separation from the performance context,” says Arun Subramanian, Co-founder & Chief of Strategic Initiatives, enParadigm, adding that they achieve this through proprietary, award-winning learning tech, industry expertise, and connecting learning to performance context in the role.
The startup has helped 500+ clients from across sectors drive growth and leadership. It is a fast-growing company led by a group of IIM A alumni founders: Hanuman Kamma, Co-founder & CEO; John Cherian, Co-founder & Executive Director; Kumar Veetrag, Co-founder & CTO; Arun Subramanian, Co-founder & Chief of Strategic Initiatives. “Today, we are a team of 80+ people delivering end-to-end learning solutions company from product development, content, design, and facilitation, to reporting,” says Subramanian. The clients from 20+ sectors include organisations like Citibank, HSBC, Coca-Cola, Dell, MRF, Pfizer, SBI, TCS, Philips, Asian Paints, Infosys, Colgate-Palmolive, WNS, etc.
The company addresses many challenges of its clients. States Subramanian, “Sales function is definitely a key area where businesses require our solutions as they look to expand beyond urban areas to grow. The front-line workforce sees a high rate of infant attrition – people leaving in the first six months of employment. There are some significant cost elements associated with this problem.”
Then there is a factor of low sales productivity. According to Subramanian, many sales people take at least six months before getting sales ready. Most of them quit within that time, leading to low sales productivity at an organisational level. “The other challenge from an employee standpoint; to give you an example from BFSI, is that many front-line sales people join with the expectation that that they can make significant money in a short span of time. For example, in insurance and financial service sectors, the ability to constantly build relationships with new prospects and strengthen the connect with existing customers is important,” he adds.
Training consequently has to be relevant, timely, and scalable; and help them learn in the flow of work. “More importantly, training has to help people who are working remotely, overcome the free agent mindset and perform in a systematic manner. Since sales as a function is high on human quotient training also needs to reflect that. This is where we come in,” points out Subramanian.
Enparadigm has positioned itself as an end-to-end provider of solutions that enables the frontline sales force to succeed at selling. They do this with a combination of two solutions detailed below:
Sales readiness: Proprietary mobile platform “Launchpad” to provide day to day guidance, and follow-up with every new salesperson for the first three months. It is based on three key levers:
i) AI powered mobile technology platform: Personalised context specific support for every salesperson based on capability levels, and activity gaps.
ii) Context specific ready-to-use content: Highly relevant, role specific content in nine regional languages.
iii) Virtual coaching at scale: Individual, weekly mentoring for every salesperson and daily actionable intelligence to sales managers.
The salespeople get personalised daily guidance, and ‘action items’ using machine learning, along with thousands of videos of sales content in nine languages, and a virtual coach who speaks to them regularly to help them deliver. The solution helps managers get an X-ray on each salesperson’s capability, insights on what works and doesn’t work on the ground, and the ability to send reminders and follow-ups with a click.
Following are the details of how Launchpad helped a large insurance company:
i) 55 per cent increase in premium collected in the first six months.
ii) 15 per cent reduction in attrition within the first six months of joining.
Iii) 97 per cent more revenue achieved by users who adhered to the process than those who did not.
Sales enablement: Proprietary mobile platform “SmartSell” delivers bite-sized and up-to-date content on sales pitches, product information, and sales help at a click to enable the frontline sales force to have effective customer conversations. The platforms also helps salespeople create personalised presentations for customers on-the-go.
“Our frontline sales solutions have empowered 200,000+ salespeople till date and improved topline of several businesses. More than 80 per cent of our users use our solutions at least two days a week and 40 per cent of users use our solutions daily,” shares Subramanian.
The company has a strong focus on innovation to meet the ever-changing demands of the constantly evolving marketplace. “Our flagship mobile platforms, Launchpad and SmartSell, have been built after extensive field research with salespeople on the ground. We understood their day-to-day challenges as a result of 1000+ conversations and used these insights to provide a seamless user experience on our mobile platforms. We also analyse data on 200+ user touchpoints on the platforms to further understand user behaviour and enhance the platform,” says Subramanian.
Further, AI is used to personalise the learning path and deliver content at the time of need. According to Subramanian, based on the speed on learning, previously covered topics, user behaviour, and other data points, the platform is capable of delivering topics that employees tackle next. A host of ‘smart triggers’ are also employed within the app to boost adoption and regular engagement.
“Gamification is a major component of our mobile platforms with quizzes being delivered once learning items are completed. Leaderboards, badges and achievements all help with increasing usage of the platform and ensuring stickiness of the product,” he remarks.
Future plan for the solutions revolve around catering to the needs of every salesperson, irrespective of expertise, geographic location or customer base. “We already have bite-sized video training content in eight regional languages and are planning to increase the number of languages to 15 in the coming year. Additionally, the use of AI/ML in personalising the user journey in our products is being piloted with a cohort of 10,000 users. We are planning to expand this use of AI/ML for personalisation across all our users in the coming year,” says Subramanian, adding that their strategic expansion plans involve providing the solutions to users outside India and steps are being taken to establish a foothold in new geographies.
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