Travel solution providers drive SMEs with adoption of cloud: Research

Vantage point: Insights from cutting-edge research

A rise in global travel and adoption of cloud solutions will drive growth in the SME (small and medium enterprise) travel technology market, points out a research paper published by Frost & Sullivan’s Digital Transformation team. The global travel market is flourishing. Growth is driven by several factors, including airport expansion in tier-I and II cities, high demand in emerging economies, government infrastructure development, a rise in disposable income, and adoption of cloud technology by enterprises for travel solutions and analytics.

Developments and trends driving growth in the global travel technology market have come on the back of focus on customer experience and pricing transparency by travel solution providers; building price and convenience orientated integrated solutions concentration on SME markets; providing packed solutions to ensure high cohesion with expense and invoice management solutions; and travel solution market’s evolution into a technologically equipped and sophisticated sector. A major challenge has been the lack of awareness about solutions and how to they can be leveraged. Successful travel solutions providers will be those that offer multiple try-before-you-buy, customisable, all-in-one solutions that integrate with internal finance teams, while providing a uniform experience across all platforms. “Global SMEs are looking toward travel solutions that provide new sources of revenue and act as a business enabler by streamlining their budget and aiding new growth opportunities,” said Gowtham Bandi, Senior Consulting Analyst, Digital Transformation (ICT) Practice, Frost & Sullivan. “Cloud travel solutions enable a platform for the enterprise to grow while trying new solutions at minimum cost.”

Competency-based hiring and analytics pay off

High performing teams focus more on competency-based hiring and analytics and performance forecasting when compared to low-performing managers, according to a report titled “Demystifying Sales Hiring”. The report has been published by Mettl (a global online talent measurement solution provider) in collaboration with SHRM India. The key objective of the research study is to better understand the nature of sales across industries as well as identify key factors that lead to success in various sales situations. It provides insights regarding “how HRs can build a winning sales team”. The survey covered 1,600-plus sales professionals across industries.

Hiring the right talent emerged as one of the top three growth drivers to improve the performance of sales across industry, company size, buyer type business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). Teams invest inadequate time to know why their top performers are successful in their organisation. Further, many firms don’t use simple tools like online assessments and structured interviews for hiring the right sales executive effectively. An important block in ensuring organisations grow at the desired rates and sell to the new-age customers is by building winning sales team. HRs and sales leaders need to understand which competencies make their top performers successful. These competencies then must be replicated to resolve multiple issues faced by HRs across employee life cycle ranging from shortlisting the right people out of the shrinking talent pool to hiring the best-fit candidate for organisation’s unique requirements to on-boarding these right people quickly to keeping them motivated and ensuring regular trainings for better productivity as well as returns on investments.