Q&A with Arthur Fernandez, Chief Growth Officer and GM of Riyo at JCurve Solutions

Consumers in the Philippines continue to prefer the convenience and omnichannel solutions when it comes to buying products or services, according to Kantar’s 2021 shopping trends. For businesses, this means every point of sale — both in-store and online — needs to be easily accessible and seamless, otherwise, customers will shift to what they think is more convenient.

Arthur Fernandez, chief growth officer of JCurve Solutions and general manager of Riyo, shares how SMEs can keep up with fast and efficient delivery systems demanded by digital-savvy customers.

1. What is the outlook for services like Riyo in the Philippines, a year into the pandemic? Please describe it in terms of the convergence of e-commerce and retail, as well as the customer behavior of Filipinos.

Any business undertaking standard e-commerce and/or retail-only processes is not placing seriousness on how the market is adapting without first understanding and tapping into its full customer base. The customer experience is critical to maintaining customer loyalty.

Customers are savvier with the use of digital tools. The challenge is how do you manage and retain the loyalty once you have them in your portfolio? Being able to provide a great customer experience through the full lifecycle of the service and giving them the opportunity to feedback, receive promotions, and buy more will provide the loyalty and avenues for recommendations to friends and family.

2. What are the critical challenges that SMEs in the services sector face?

The critical challenges that we see in SMEs today vary from operations, digital transformation, cybersecurity, and up to customer-facing:

• Operations. Finding the right people, maintaining and continuously enhancing safe protocols adherence
• Digital transformation. Ease of using the tools provided
• Cybersecurity. Now, as more and more solutions are cloud-based, it is not only solution providers that have to take ownership of maintaining cybersecurity practices, but businesses must understand what is happening with their data and employees, including providing valuable and required training.
• Customer-facing. Digital transformation at the customer-facing end is critical. You will lose a customer quickly if the solution is not intuitive and without guidance steps to complete the process. The more a customer needs to call a help desk, the more you are likely to lose the customer regardless of whether it’s a positive or negative outcome.

3. How does Riyo respond to the challenges?

Riyo being a cloud platform removes the burden for an organization to maintain any hardware, software, or areas that are not their core business. Riyo addresses the challenges for the customer by providing an intuitive front-end and ease of navigation while for the schedulers and other resources (by its employees or third parties) the comprehensiveness of information available to complete the service.

In addition, the Riyo platform is adaptable to many service-based businesses because of the highly configurable capability to build forms, workflows, and more that suit the business requirement.

4. How does Riyo integrate to serve an SME’s offline and online presence?

Riyo 100% serves the online presence of any SME by utilizing the infrastructure that is always available. It has a very light footprint that utilizes mobile capability with low data usage. The Riyo solution is continuously being enhanced with the latest technology advancements.

5. What is unique about Riyo? What differentiates it from other service management solutions?

In short, Riyo is a platform that is configurable to many different service business types. It is not a point solution, unlike most other products available. Riyo is built in a similar framework to cloud ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions, with the ability to only use what you need and the confidence that you can add and scale functionality as needed.

6. Are there specific sectors or industries that Riyo wants to focus on in the Philippines?

Based on our experience and traction within Australia and Singapore, the focus for the Philippines will be on:

• Healthcare Services
• Consumer Services
• Transportation and Logistics
• Professional Services
• Retail and Distribution

7. What are your growth drivers and targets for Riyo?

Our core growth driver revolves around getting as many businesses and users onto the platform (within the defined industry sectors) as possible. While Riyo is a relatively new solution to market, we attract multiples seamlessly, whether that is end-businesses, resources in the form of employees or contractors, and end customers.

While we continue to grow our direct sales model, the Channel Partnership model is important, providing attractive incentives to our partners on the whole.

8. Please share a case study to demonstrate how Riyo helps in easing the challenges of Filipino SMEs.

While I could share more than one case study, let me highlight one that is not only simple but very easily implemented (and supports the overall community on the whole).

Take a traditional brick-and-mortar food and beverages business. Such businesses face limited physical traffic due to the various lock-downs, but using Riyo can still take orders, deliver (whether through their fleet or that of a third party), receive payment, get customer feedback — all within one solution. The real value add is where the business is engaging third parties. They can be paid immediately through split payments after the customer has paid and service completed. In addition, by creating a marketplace environment for resources to register and validate their details, the F&B (food and beverage) business will never be short of contract staff.

The challenges of service-focused industries in the Philippines normally begin with efficiency. Customers focus more on product/service experience and satisfaction. Your products or services act as the face and voice of your company.

Service excellence is integral to the needs of your customers. Excellence usually comes with a cost. With the right and effective solution in place, your company can outshine its competitors. To market more potential customers and retain your existing ones, going above and beyond is the key.

Riyo provides the opportunity to all service-focused industries to streamline your service delivery process with efficiency — from bookings, dispatching, payments, and customer feedback. It helps businesses track everything, reduce the manual workload, and scale their services quickly. With Riyo, timing is everything.

For more on Riyo (A JCurve Solutions Company), visit this link.