Academic MBA Question:
“This is simply ridiculous!” Mr. Manas Gupta couldn’t control his anger when Ms Sai Lokhande tried to explain the rationale behind steep increase in subscription fee for their CRM SaaS solution. Mr. Gupta, Sales Head for Acme Water Solutions Pvt Ltd, was instrumental in subscribing to CRM SaaS solution provided by the company owned by Ms Sai Lokhande two years back. Ms Sai Lokhande had quoted very competitive subscription price at that point of time. It took almost six months for Acme Water Solutions to get solution configured for their needs at the end of which users were happy using the solution.
When Mr. Manas Gupta flatly refused to paying any additional price, Ms
Sai Lokhande got up from her chair and started leaving the cabin of Mr. Gupta.
However, while leaving, she reiterated the need for increase in price and
commented that her company will need to switch off the running solution if they
don’t receive revised subscription fee at the stipulated date. After Ms Sai
Lokhande left the cabin, Mr. Gupta figured out that it would not so easy to
simply switch to another CRM solution in available time. He suddenly realized
that he has got into a vendor lock-in with this CRM solution.
a. How cloud CRM vendor could create vendor lock-in for the company? (5 Marks)
b. What can company do to reduce vendor lock-in? What are the lessons learned? (5 Marks)
Academic Assignment Answer:
