The NASSCOM Product Conclave held annually in Bangalore is a confluence of innovative minds and entrepreneurial spirit of the Indian Products Ecosystem. This year, the focus was on “Scaling New Heights – From cloud adoption to lean startup models” and the Conclave took place from 10 -11 November 2010 at Hotel Lalit Ashok.
Among various sessions that formed a part of this conclave, I found Cloud computing – Transformation to the cloud, Building products for Billion Indians, The New Internet: An Economy of Scale and partnership and Product companies’ problem and solution, to be particularly interesting.
I gathered of lot of information and this knowledge would be of immense help to me going forward. Some of my key take-aways include a clearer understanding on various concepts like entrepreneurship, people management as well as virtualization and cloud computing.
Further the event turned out to be a good networking platform and I got an opportunity to meet many like-minded people including some industry colleagues. The interaction with some of the speakers was also very encouraging and I look forward to attending more of such events in the future.
I cannot complete this post without mentioning NASSCOM who did a fantastic job of organizing, coordinating and executing this whole event so efficiently and professionally.
The Kolkata team at eRevMax welcomed Goddess Durga on 7th October through a small evening celebration. We all turned up in our full festive fashions and decorated the office in an attempt to win some coveted prizes.
The festivities started with a cultural song followed by participation from all members for the various competitions which included traditional dance (Dhunuchi Naach), Uludhwani contest, slogan writing and memory games.
The Departmental Decoration trophy attracted a lot of interest and the teams started preparations well in advance in order to conceptualize different themes for decoration. Using an innovative theme and brilliant decoration, the Customer Support team emerged Winners closely followed byRTConnect team who finished second while the Finance team won a special third prize for their tribal Durga decoration.
Sandeep Jha and Anita Guha won Best Dressed Male and Best Dressed Female prizes respectively for their traditional and ethnic attire.
I will cherish this Mahalaya celebration for a long time to come as this was the first time I saw a corporate house allowing employees to celebrate a festival whole-heartedly. It felt as if we all came out of the box and enjoyed the evening to its fullness. We will keep these wonderful moments with us now and forever with the hope ‘Aaschhe bocchor abar hobe’.
Mohua Dey has recently joined eRevMax and is a Sr. Content Executive. She is based out of Kolkata and can be reached at mohuad@erevmax.com
The International Sales Meeting stayed in the home country of RateTiger’s operations office. The team in London traveled south bound to the British coast to my home town Bournemouth, here the rest of the international sales team joined us for four days of intense team building, strategy deliberation and skills development. This was the first time I had been in the same room as all our global reps and it was a great way to learn more about the specific regions and how the marketing and communications campaigns are working.
OurVP International Sales, Keith Povah, organised a very thorough but fun and engaging itinerary. Surrounded by our Management Team and Board of Directors, our sales managers demonstrated their success over the past 12 months and the opportunities that lie ahead.
Our new VP RTCorporate, Keith Watson, told me “The ISM managed to combine the sharing of information amongst a large team with the chance to get to know them better in a non-work environment. The sessions allowed for many different topics to be covered, which for a new starter is a great introduction.” Having only been in his role for a few weeks it seems this was the perfect intro to the madness of the Tiger!
Casey Davy, our UK Sales Manager (while he had to stay home – no international travel for him) said “There were great training sessions to expand and reinforce product knowledge, opportunities for knowledge sharing, and exercises to help develop individual skill sets and overviews of strategic sales and marketing plans. It was also an opportunity for Management to share with the team the big picture, corporate goals, and development within our budding company.”
While our US team did get to travel halfway across the world, from Orlando our Sales Manager Sandy Fanucci also a new member of the team said: “I have been in sales for over 9 years and have participated in many Regional/National Sales Meetings. I have to say this is honestly the first one I enjoyed as much as I did. The meeting format was perfect. Sitting in meeting rooms all day, consecutive days in a row can be very rigorous for someone that’s used to being on the go. So the fact that we got what we needed from a full day’s meeting then a “day break” in between with LOTS of fun was ideal.“
The ‘day break’ she is referring to was a day of Paintball. All members of the team conscientiously participated. The groups, split in two, came out winning four games each – although the hot dogs were much to be desired.
Following the ISM, the team is now back at their desks rapidly working through developments and ideas that came from the session. It’s non-stop for the Tiger!
Ryan Haynes is the Marketing Head at eRevMax and is responsible for driving all PR and Marketing activities of RateTiger and eRevMax brands globally. Ryan is based out of London and can be reached at ryanh@ratetiger.com
Earlier this month, I got an opportunity to host leading Bangalore hoteliers at an evening event organized by RateTiger. The idea was to provide a social platform for hoteliers to connect over cocktails while sharing vignettes of their channel management experiences.
With 25 hoteliers present, it was a cozy get-together with every member being very warm and forthcoming with their strategies, suggestions, challenges and queries. Some of our client hoteliers were present too and were happy to share their experience of new channel management modules that they have been using in RateTiger.
As the evening wore on, everyone embarked on a stimulating discussion on revenue strategies. It turned out to be a productive day for them, they also realized that they have not really interacted earlier and many had met their counterparts from other hotels for the first time. They just knew and viewed each other as competitors and not as industry peers. I was so glad to have modified their outlook and they were appreciative of our effort for having hosted such an interesting meet.
Chancery Pavilion was the chosen venue for the evening and being a RateTiger user they were happy to be part of this event. I look forward to doing similar events in other Indian and Asian cities so as to help Revenue Managers meet up outside work and share their valuable experiences with each other. And with our technology, I am sure we can further help revenue managers achieve increased online sales and optimize revenue.
Sudhir Ghildiyal is Sales Manager – Asia Pacific at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. He is based out of India and can be reached at sudhirg@erevmax.com
On 28th August the Kolkata sky was overcast with dark malevolent clouds which burst into heavy showers on and off. The outfield was wet and there were even puddles across the pitch; hardly an ideal situation to play an outdoor game, let alone a Football Tournament. Try as much as they might but the elements of nature never stood a chance when it encountered head-on, the indomitable spirit of Team eRevMax who were out for a spirited game.
With full attendance from all six participating teams, the game started with much cheer and fanfare. The teams led by their captains – Royal Blue(Suvranshu Mohanty), Dark Blue(Pushparghya Mandal), Olive Green(Surajit Kar), Green (Abdul Hasan), Yellow (Kaushik Kapat) andRed (Briti Sundar Biswas), looked every bit international. And why not? Along with the Kolkata members we had Ragnar Strerath, VP Product from our Germany office and Jorge V Rico, Project Manager – RTConnect from Spain who were here on a business visit. We also had our new French MM who joined the Kolkata office just a few weeks back – Frank Tchere who is originally from Ivory Coast, USA. So it was a team comprising members from across continents and what a beautiful game they played!
After a series of games, teams Royal Blue and Yellow emerged as the top contenders in their respective Leagues. The teams in second position were Dark Blue and Green. After a nail-biting match, Team Dark Blue emerged winner for the third position under the able captaincy of Pushparghya Mandal.
The finale was a nerve wrenching game; it went into extra time, at the end of which both the teams had scored 3 goals each. With no definite result, the referee announced penalty shoot-out. Team Yellow played a tactful and patient game emerging aswinners for the coveted Trophy.
Except for a toe injury suffered by Surajit Kar, Captain – Team Olive Green, the games went pretty smoothly. After an exciting afternoon, Udai Singh Solanki, MD India presided over the prize distribution ceremony and awarded the Champion’s Trophy to Team Yellow and Jorge Rico presented the Runners-up trophy to Team Royal Blue. The Best Goalkeeper title went to Sumanta Pramanik while the Best Scorer title was picked up by Joydeep Chakraborty; Ragnar Strerath did the honors for these two young men.
At the end, what did we all say? eRevMaxians Rock… Long Live eRevMax 🙂
Kushal Dasgupta is Market Manager – Austria, Czech Rep., UK & Ireland at eRevMax and is responsible for providing product training and handling client queries. Kushal is based out of Kolkata, India and can be reached at kushald@ratetiger.com
It was a successful day of training with Paradores after a long road of joint collaboration. The training was organized jointly with Juan Manuel Merino and Javier Blanco from Paradores and Nuria Bermejo, Key Account Manager RateTiger with me coordinating the session.
Over 70 people attended the session at Parador de Alcala de Henares on September 13, 2010, eager to learn and start using our tools. Optimism filled the room with full support to incorporate it as they have the certainty thatRateTiger provides an opportunity to manage their online sales and obtain privileged information to reinforce the strategy of online growth to Paradores group.
Paradores de Turismo is a publicly funded limited company with eight decades of history and which currently manages more than 90 hotel establishments thanks to the work performed on a daily basis by its thousands of employees. Many Paradores properties are located in nature reserves and in historic buildings, such as castles, palaces, convents and monasteries.
One of the aspects that has endured in time and which characterizes Paradores de Turismo is its mission – “Paradores is a tourism policy instrument which projects the image of modernity and quality of our tourism abroad and which contributes to the territorial integration, to the recovery and maintenance of Historical and Artistic Heritage and to the conservation and enjoyment of natural areas, all the while functioning as a driving force behind the set of revitalizing actions in areas with reduced tourism or economic activity.”
A corporation with just one shareholder, the Spanish state, Paradores de Turismo is also an instrument of the government’s tourism policy, as well as a leading company in the Spanish tourism sector which obtains important benefits which nourish the public objectives for which this company was created.
Pilar Sanchez Aita is Sales Manager – Spain & Portugal at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of Spain and can be reached at pilara@ratetiger.com
Earlier this month, I was in Houston to attend the International Convention organized by the National Business Travel Association, the leading Association for the corporate travel community. The event included a full schedule of educational seminars as well as an exhibition floor for travel buyers & sellers to interact.
I was excited to see a gathering of over 6000 attendees from all sectors of the corporate travel vertical including corporate travel executives, airlines, hotel groups, transportation companies, corporate travel management companies, meeting planners and technology companies.
The convention began with the announcement of NBTA’s plan to aggressively pursue a more global approach and its rechristening to Global Business Travel Association (GBTA). This was followed by educational sessions covering various aspects of corporate travel.
Key speakers focused on the recovery of the industry over the past 3 quarters with an expected increase in rates for 2011. One of the main topics of conversation was the increase in unbundled fees in the airline industry and the possible implementation of these in the hotel industry to give hotels the opportunity to increase revenues.
I found NBTA Convention to be the perfect platform to introduce RateTiger’s real-time hotel rate benchmarking tool – RTCorp to the corporate travel managers. The corporate travel industry is at a point where corporates need to be able to benchmark their contracted rates so that they can obtain the best possible rates for their companies.
Traditionally corporate travel managers used to contract their hotels once a year for the year. However with the advent of hotel yield management, hotel rates are changing consistently, sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis. RTCorp gives travel managers the opportunity to evaluate their contracted rates against the OTA lowest published rates and provides them with the reports necessary to approach and re-contract their hotels.
Our presence at NBTA helped educate the travel managers as to the value of benchmarking their contracted rates against the OTA rates. Our direct meetings generated a lot of interest amongst the attendees and we found corporate travel managers understanding the need for a benchmarking tool to help them negotiate with their travel suppliers harder and get a better and open deal.
Overall it was a great experience and kudos to NBTA for putting together a very well organized and meaningful event. I look forward to attending the next convention but with a different name – the GBTA International Convention 2011 😉
Mark Neter is International Sales Manager at eRevMax. He is based out of US and can be reached at markn@ratetiger.com
eRevMaxians in Kolkata had a fun filled day on the last day of July when we all went toWet o’ Wild, Kolkata’s water park, to celebrate Monsoon. What better way to enjoy the season then getting drenched in a wave pool with family and colleagues!
The most popular water game proved to be handball; we split ourselves into teams and held a series of matches. With the DJ belting out popular dance numbers, it was a perfect scenario for a day out in the water.
There were various water rides and a huge waterfall, since we were such a large group the park looked like we had booked all of it. After all the rides, water games, splashing, diving, and some rain dance as well, we changed for the evening party and assembled in a small banquet for more games, this time dry.
Post-refreshments we hosted a series of party games including the old favorite musical chairs, dumb charades, dancing and talent contest. There were prizes for all and the kids had an awesome day. Check out some pictures to see us in action.
Sujay Ghosh is Sr. Content Writer at eRevMax and is based out of Kolkata. He can be reached at sujayg@erevmax.com
The BHA Luncheon event was an extension of our partnership with British Hotel Association. It took place in the Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel on 29th June and had a great turnout of over 700.
We had the pleasure of inviting both clients and partners to intermingle over a great meal; we were joined by Bridgestreet Apartments, English Rose Hotels, Expedia, The Leonard Hotel, Supranational Hotels, and St. Giles Hotel.
The BHA Luncheon this year was more special because it ended one era and welcomed another as the CEO Bob Cotton stepped down and the current CEO Ufi Ibrahim stood at the helm.
For us, this was another great opportunity to re-establish contacts with many hotel owners and directors and network with industry peers.
Casey Davy is Sales Manager – UK at eRevMax. He is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. Casey is based out of London and can be reached at caseyd@ratetiger.com
The last day of June saw the Association of Hotels of Portugal (AHP) organizing a seminar on Hotel Distribution. It brought together a group of experts in the area of hotel distribution to advice hoteliers on best available tools and latest trends in hotel management, online distribution and channel management.
An increasing number of tourists make their hotel reservations via the Internet. Also though the economy is recuperating, it has not held back Portuguese people from traveling. According to “The Travels of the Portuguese in 2010” study conducted in May this year, the Portuguese say they want to travel at least once this year. This has further made hoteliers more optimistic about business and has enhanced the need to distribute online to ensure they get their fair share of bookings from this dynamic medium.
The seminar was therefore a great platform to present directly to owners and hotel managers, marketing managers and marketing directors who are the real decision makers. I conducted a presentation on RateTiger and the concept of our solutions which included the advantages of online distribution; how to distribute more and better without changing its structure; how to boost sales team and how to ensure price parity.
Other presenters included Zoover (Hotel Review sites and their importance); Viatecla (advantages of integrating review sites and how to monitor them) and Travelport/Galileo Portugal (GDS and Hotels). With over 60 hoteliers present it was just the perfect sized audience for making a strong presence amongst them.
Overall the seminar was excellent and very productive. I received a lot of questions which showed the interest level of the audience and I was also approached for more information on RateTiger products. I look forward to other sessions by AHP as these are quality events which are purely B2B and helps all involved find what they need.
Pilar Sanchez Aita is Sales Manager – Spain & Portugal at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of Spain and can be reached at pilara@ratetiger.com
