Axienta, a local software company has been a driving force in Sales Force Automation (SFA) solutions in Sri Lanka since 2010. The company’s brand “VANTAGE” has encouraged many industry leaders in FMCG, Pharmaceutical and Telco to utilize their technology, to drive business optimization and efficiency in their sale force operations. In addition, Axienta has established strategic partnerships with a host of leading technology brands including Microsoft.    

Better Together in the Cloud and Beyond: Taking the next significant step in their journey as a dominant player in the SFA space, Axienta recently established a successful strategic partnership with Microsoft, to help their clients migrate from on premise to the cloud by deploying Microsoft Azure.

In a bid to announce this move, Axienta partnered with Microsoft, to hold a breakfast forum titled “VANTAGE on the Cloud “to educate their key customers of the business benefits offered. 

Cloud as the lever to accelerate business: “This is a major milestone for our growth strategy and the beginning of a powerful opportunity to expand the adoption of our VANTAGE solution. By merging the expertise of Microsoft Azure with our expertise in Sales Force Automation we believe we can give even better benefits to our valued customers to generate business outcomes that maximize their returns “stated Mr. Manju Fernando the CEO of Axienta in his welcome address.

Mr.Hasitha Abeywardena, Country Manager, Microsoft Sri Lanka added ‘As part of the partnership, Microsoft will work with Axienta  to extend cloud capabilities across their markets, helping to drive new and innovative solutions, while extending current applications with new intelligent capabilities.”

Cost Effectiveness: Mr.Jiffry IIham, Azure Applications and Infrastructure Manager at Microsoft Sri Lanka explained the downside of investing into owning your own on-premise environment that incurs huge equipment, maintenance and depreciation costs. “With Microsoft Azure, companies can shift these costs dramatically, by renting their servers from Microsoft for a small monthly cost and use storage, network and other elements of data center infrastructure virtually, permitting flexible adjustments in its usage. Offering a pay-as-you go payment plan it allows businesses to purchase only what they need, reducing the costs of infrastructure, maintenance, and management of their IT environment.”

Ultimate Data Security: He further elaborated “There’s always a misconception that putting your data into the Cloud is not a good idea. Microsoft provides some of the most advanced security technology in Azure, so that data is safely protected as Azure is built around the privacy and security demands of business needs. It offers complete transparency, so you know how your data is accessed, stored and secured. With Azure, you own and control the collection, use, and distribution of your data. Microsoft also has a global incident response team that work around the clock to deal with any cyber threats.”

High Availability and Scalability: He added that Azure provides high availability because of Microsoft’s vast global footprint. With data centers located in all parts of the world, Azure can scale up or down to meet the volatile needs of businesses. Organizations can have their services running in data centers globally with great ease, as it’s not dependent on location, providing the freedom to manage and deploy servers on a massive, global network.

A comprehensive SFA solution on the cloud:  Saman Perera, Group CIO from Capital Maharaja Group outlined to the audience how “VANTAGE on the cloud “had offered their organization innovative tools that their sales reps used to easily perform common tasks and gain quick insights for optimal productivity. With easy availability on mobile devices, on the web and within email, their sales teams had productivity tools they could use to close more deals and stay on top of everything that’s happening in their deals, in real time, helping them to be more agile and well positioned to boost business capabilities, create new customer value propositions, leverage new markets to creating new channels, finding new customers and driving deeper engagement with existing ones.

Next steps: Sanjeevanie Wanniatchi, VP – Delivery and Client Services of Axienta informed   how the VANTAGE Cloud solution can provide organizations access to BI-related data such as dashboards, KPIs and other valuable business analytics.

Overall “VANTAGE on the cloud” looks set to provide a wider array of solutions to organizations, to increase security, productivity and reduce capital expenses while increasing scalability and ultimately reducing technical debt.