Bangalore Oct 16 2007: Carazoo.com, a Bangalore-based car car portal to prospective car buyers, allows its user to view cars through a number of criteria like manufacturer, model, body style, price range, etc. This portal basically acts as an interactive platform between visitors and car dealers, allowing visitors to get quotes from dealers located in their area and arrange for test-drives, free of cost.

In the last couple of years, the company ahs witnessed an exponential growth. Hence specialized IT solution becomes immediate requirement to provide better customer experience.
According to Pankaj Patel, voice president of Crazoo.com, India, “” IT plays critical role in all our business processes. We use IT for almost all our applications, Processes, and product development.”
IT deployment has been made specifically in the 3 areas – such as HR, Internet marketing, and accounts. However, online marketing is specific only to Carazoo.com. The parent company-Logix Microsystems shares deployments by the HR and accounts department with Carazoo.com

Elaborating on the problems faced by the website, Patel said that Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and online advertising were 2 crucial concerns. The portal required a mode through which the website would get a wide coverage, thereby directing more traffic to the portal.

As far as the HR and account departments of the parent company were concerned, Patel explained,” Some of the employee-related information with accounts needed to be automated and disseminated to the employees on a regular basis. Since this was highly specific to the company, we decided to develop an in-house solution.”

Due to tremendous growth, the Logix Microsystems’ employee strength grew from 90 to 250. An HR solution encompassing recruitment tracking, employee details, leave management, training & development module, etc., was needed.
However, the company source didn’t revel the name of the solution used for managing its HR department, stating that it was confidential. For accounts, an in-house software solution was deployed.

For online marketing, Carazoo.com selected Google and Yahoo. According to Patel, these 2 search engines account for 90% of all searches conducted in the world. The portal also places its advertisements using Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Web18. Few other vendors are under consideration. Google AdWords was deployed in June 2007 within a day; Web 18 was deployed in August 2007 within 4 days; and Yahoo was deployed in September 2007 within 5 days.

The accounts solution was also deployed in August 2007. The total testing and development took about 2 months. The deployment process faced some problems, such as migrating old data. The migration took some time, such as the data weren’t revised and had to be individually and manually checked.

However, Patel affirmed that these solutions have worked satisfactory till now.

The HR solution was deployed in August 2007, taking almost a month. The solution has minor concerns for the company-during and even after deployment. Data migration, customization of user reports, sending access links to employee across 2 primary e-mail domains, and intranet issues were the concerns raised during development.

When asked if the solution has been satisfactory, Patel said that few issues were yet to be resolved.

The extensive uses of IT have helped Logix Microsystems and Carazoo.com to better manage their growing business. Use of online marketing has enabled the portal to attract an increasing number of visitors to the site. Accounts and HR departments are also now better managed. Improved management has also made the site more attractive to visitors and provides a better user experience.

The company has spent over Rs 1 crore on IT so far, and it’s planning to spend more in the coming year. It has plans to use some more technologies, which aren’t currently used for Carazoo.com to support new functionality and features that are incorporated in the site in the future.

By Abhinna Shreshtha
Mumbai.

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