Cavintek helps India SMBs with workflow management app
That's what the product from Chennai startup Cavintek does.
Cavintek provides cloud-based workflow management tool for SMBs to manage and automate business processes within the organization. The workflow management system includes HR management, document management, inventory management, asset management and more modules.
Cavitek's workflow application is ideal for construction companies, manufacturing companies, healthcare providers and BPOs, product companies, and jewelry wholesalers. It provides customized workflow management system according to the industry and their requirements.
Cavintek's 'cFlow' cloud application provides three key benefits: increase productivity, realize cost savings and improve the overall efficiency.
Bhaskar Krishnamoorthy, founder and CEO of Cavintek shared more details with ZDNet about the company and its aspirations.
ZDNet: What's the story behind Cavintek?
Bhaskar: "When I moved back from the U.S. two years ago, I did some consulting for a few companies. I saw that my friends were running operations and managing with a lot of spreadsheets. I figured it was inefficient and expensive. I built a small tool specific to their workflow and immediately saw the advantage of using a business app instead of excel.
Similar requirements came from construction company to manage material movement and inventory. I reconfigured the same tool to deliver to their customers too. That's when I decided to build a base framework that'll help in creating these apps.
While I was building cflow, I came across a couple of leads in the jewelry industry. I used the same framework and extended it to the jewelry customer. So, I was able to create a base framework and build individual domain solutions for different industries."
What is Cavintek's product cflow all about. What problems does it address?
cflow provides a simple way to automate business processes within companies. cflow helps SMBs transition from running their operations on spreadsheets to using business applications to increase productivity and reduce costs.
The overwhelming complexity of data and process management is reduced with cflow to help data and process management become easier. Many times, inconsistent and adhoc email-based processes hinders productivity and hides critical information to help better decision-making. Cavintek addresses these problems via cflow--a cloud-based workflow management software that helps our customers become more productive.
Any competitors solving the same problems in the current market. How do you stand out?
There are competitors trying to solve similar problems. Any search for BPM tools throw up a good set of vendors. Quite a few target the large enterprises and are obviously are priced very high. There are smaller players who try to provide for SMBs in a niche segment like Google App users or a specific area like invoice automation, accounts automation, and etc.
We differentiate ourselves by providing complete automation solutions for SMBs--all integrated--that helps solve their operational problems, all at an affordable price.
Who is your target audience? What verticals do you think your product suits the best?
Small and midsized businesses, between 50 and 1,000 employees, that are focused on improving operational productivity, is our target market. Our initial focus was in the construction industry, but we have customers in the education, retail, accounting, manufacturing and IT industries. Our base product is industry agnostic, but we do have customized solutions for the construction, accounting, and jewelry industries.
What are the key features of your product? What problems do they address?
A simple, yet powerful forms builder, rules engine, notification engine, along with a collaboration system and ability to attach files, forms the key feature set of cflow. In addition, modules for inventory management, purchase orders, invoice and accounting, HR, issue tracker and asset management are available as options. SMBs are constantly looking for process improvements and reducing overall operational costs. cflow addresses these problems by providing automation solutions that are fully integrated, cost-effective, and customizable.
What's your take on workflow management in the SMB industry or corporates as a whole?
In this day and age, there is tremendous competition and SMBs are constantly looking for ways to increase productivity and keep costs low. SMBs look at workflow automation tools that are easy to use, quick to implement, and inexpensive. Another crucial factor for SMBs is the initial hand-holding and support.
How do you go about creating/helping provide solutions for diverse verticals?
When we engage with customers, our focus is on understanding the core problems the customer wishes to solve and seeing if our solution will help solve these problems. We then propose a solution that might include one or more modules of cflow. We suggest new modules if they can be built within cflow and provide additional capabilities to the customer. In some cases, we recommend a different tool for automation such as an accounting package. Ultimately the goal is to help our customers become more productive.
What are your future plans growth strategy and etc?
We are a bootstrapped company and have not gone after funding from angels and VCs. Our initial focus has been to discover our customers and see if we can provide a solution that truly solves their problems. Our goal for the next few months is to continue adding customers and working on our product to ensure our implementation cycles are short and the solution is compelling. We are also working on making this model scalable via self-service tools.
Tell us a little about your team and yourself.
Prior to Cavintek, I was co-founder and CTO of XYKA, a travel technology company based out of Bay Area, California. At XYKA, I was responsible for client services as well as the technology team. I continue to be on the board of directors at XYKA. I also have Sivaram Subramaniam as part of my core team. Siva is responsible for marketing and evangelizing Cavintek’s products.
The product appears certainly to be a boon for a lot of SMBs and enterprises to help improve their productivity and ensure their data and process management becomes a lot easier. Would you try such a tool in your organization?