WoowUp

I am often asked why I made a CRM platform if there are already many CRMs in the market, such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Oracle, etc.

What happens is the following: The CRM concept is very good, but I don't see that it is 100% accurate with the needs of the retail world. I see the traditional CRM very oriented to B2B and of course, it can be adapted to B2C but it requires a lot of work and very customized configurations during the setup, which makes it complex and expensive.

Traditional CRMs have 3 modules: Sales, Marketing and Service. Sales is oriented to the sales funnel, to solve B2B sales processes. It definitely does not combine with Retail... I don't go to a clothing store, try on a pair of pants and they send me a proposal, they give me a demo or move my deal in the funnel when I leave the fitting room, they move the deal again when I try on another size, etc.

The marketing module applies much better, but it also suffers from the lack of integration with e-commerce and a more adapted vision to the retail world in general, with B2C oriented campaigns such as price drops or similar. And logically, service is always necessary in any sector.

In Latin America the retail world is divided into 3 types of players:

Corporation: Very large companies that are in several countries, they can be US or European corporations that expand their geographical reach or very large local ones. In this category are for example Adidas, Samsonite or Falabella and Cencosud.

Family Business: The vast majority are companies founded and managed by families that are owners or representatives of brands. They are usually manufacturers or importers.

Micro-SMEs or start-ups: They are more third party sellers or manual manufacturers, they usually sell on-line or on Mercadolibre.

The corporation represents no more than 10% of the companies and is the only one that could afford to hire a world class CRM, which needs so much configuration to meet their needs. To run the initial setup of this type of platform they need a robust IT team, a marketing team with multiple roles and a big wallet!

So the market tells us that 90% of Retail companies NEED a CRM: They need to connect better with their customers, consolidate their databases in one place, make those databases easily accessible to the marketing team to be able to monetize them, etc. All CRM concepts, but also with other: Easy to install and use, integrated with e-commerce, with pre-configured marketing campaigns, measure the impact of the actions in a simple way .... That's where we come in with WoowUp: We help to solve the CRM needs of the Retail world that traditional software companies are not being able to satisfy. That is the foundational thesis for which we made WoowUp.

In addition to this point we saw another unresolved need: Retail companies tend to be small compared to Banks, Telcos or Utilities companies, which means that the main clients of world class platforms are from other sectors, weakening their experience in solving retail problems. This difference is most noticeable in our region.

They need to understand their problems, to walk together with them in the day to day execution and to be able to adapt to their specific needs with flexibility. That’s another pillar that has helped us to grow, being able to work with our client in a much deeper way. Being a company that only works with the Retail market, and that kind of companies ultimately suffer from similar difficulties, have become us EXPERTS in solving their problems and adapting our service to their needs, thus adding a layer of expertise and customer service that they will never find in a more generic platform.

These pillars, the CRM product customized to LATAM Retail and our expert customer service are the cornerstones of our success in the region.