A Marketing of Service Presentation

Case Study of Merit-Trac: A Test in Everyones Life

Mohammad Imad Shahid Khan | Ansai Sony | Nihal Raj | Siddharth Bhagat
Section A, 2nd Semester, Bachelor of Business Management (2013-2016)

Company Background
Conceived at Airlines Caf by IT Professional Madan Padaki and software
entrepreneurs Krishna and Suresh running their venture named First Shot,
which was into financial risk management.
The opportunity was identified accidentally as First Shot was asked by its
leading client to develop a software to manage its question bank.
Madan realized that even though this was very different from the financial
products that First Shot created, Madan realized that it could add more value to
clients and that it represents a potential business opportunity.

Idea Behind the Service

To provide testing and assessment services to Corporate to help
them in recruiting big numbers, which was the emerging need.
Their key activities included test design, paper printing, test
administration, and post-test feedback that formed the Value
Proposition.

In the corporate their initial segment group was the IT/ITES and
BPO Industry, which gradually expanded to Educational,
Employee assessment and Research domain.

Company Profile
Founded : Bangalore, August 2000
Industry: Information Services

USP: An Assessment-only service Company which avoids any

inherent conflict of interest while hiring as they dont pitch
employees. This made them very different than other close rivals
which were in the form of Placement agencies. However, they are
contemplating moving towards the training domain.

Company Profile
Has assessed over 1.5 million candidates for over 150 customers.
Has 450+ full-time employees and over 1000 certified test
administrators operating out of offices at all the metro cities in
India, with around 21 state-of-the-art online testing centers in 16
cities, having 1300+ online terminals.
The suite of tests are in over 300 areas spanning Communication
skills, General abilities, Domains Skills (Engineering, Accounting,
etc.), delivered in both Online and Offline modes.

BEGINNING OF
JOURNEY
In starting they approached 4-5 VCs for the investment but as the concept
was new and it was early 2000s when there was an era of dotcom bust.
VCs were focusing on high growth tech based opportunity and they were
interested in investing at least US $ 3 Million and there investment was very
small.
Due, to this the founding member had to invest $10,000 which covered
there initial expenses.
In starting there was many obstacles like there was an implicit competition
from Internal department of potential clients and secondly they
misunderstood Merit Trac to be a placement agency.

BEGINNING OF JOURNEY
Madan worked from home to reduce expenses.
In addition , they could rely on First Shots technical and
administrative resources to get the basics of Merit Trac.
For delivery services like Printing test sheets , Locating test
centres , Finding test supervisor they rely on administrative
support from First Shot.

Finding an Angel Investor

Within few months they were able to achieve Four customers :-in which two were blue chip
company , a modest office space and a revenue of $10,000
Then ,They again approached many VCs with revised business plan but again no one
invested , so they thought if they can change their business with low budget i.e. Smaller amount
around US $ 200,000 250,000 and within two year they will achieve cash break even .
Their experience of last few months have given confidence that sales of US $ 500,000 would
be achievable in first year and this could increase to US $ 6 Million by third year
Now they thought to target High Net Worth business man . So they contacted 2 and 3 tier
accountancy firms in Bangalore .
By the end of November 2000 they found one agriculturist business man named Mr.
Ranganath .
Mr Ranganath was later replaced by HSBC.

Strategies As of Now

Volume Game
Now Merit Trac assesses around 75,000 candidates every
month

From April 2006 to March 2007 they tested around 700,000

candidates and have assessed over 1.5 million candidates till
date.
Like ICICI bank and other clients tells that they want their
recruiting team to focus on Interviewing and selection part.

Assessment Process
Clients build their Resume bank from a variety of sources.
Merit Tracs Job start from the moment client forward their resumes for
initial Screening.
Resumes are screened on the basis of parameter defined by the clients.
Assessement is broadly classified into their own four broad areas.
It content bank has over 60,000 Questions
They charge Rs . 150 per BPO candidates and Rs 600-700 per IT
candidates.

Focus and Neutrality

They managed to clock a growth rate of 300 % because they
were only focusing on Assessement only corporation and not
on other things like placement company

Challenges
Merit-Tracs focus is on expanding in range of offerings and
entering into the Education Domain.
It is in dilemma whether to change its positioning from
Assessment-only to Assessment & Training. His dilemma is that
he does not want to initiate something which would add conflict of
interest with the existing line of business and cast doubt on the
neutrality of assessments.

Challenges
At the same time if he does not initiates the Training service he sees
a big gap in the overall offerings, if this loop is not complete and a
holistic solution is not provided as demanded by Merit-Tracs stake
holders.
How to complete this loop without affecting the neutrality and
focus of Merit-Trac?

Two Options for Merit-Trac

Since the gap which Merit-Trac facing in its endeavor to expand its
presence in Education domain is Strategic Gap. Its dilemma to add
Training as a part of Service can be resolved by offering through two
options:
A Merit-Trac offering along with Assessment.
Or
A Joint-Venture with an established player offering the
same, separately from Assessment.

What Merit-Trac should do?

As is seen, Merit-Tracs dilemma is to whether or not compromise
its initial Positioning of being an Assessment-only enterprise.

This positioning is the reason why key-clients like Wipro, ABB,

ICICI Group, Accenture and like, have hired Merit-Tracs service.
Hence, therefore, to enter into the training domain while not
compromising their initial positioning, they will have to introduce a
separate entity in the form of Joint Venture.

What Merit-Trac should do?

This Joint Venture will assure the clients that both the offerings are
segregated, not compromising their candidates assessment.

Even though they have certification programs of their own like

Trac-Skills which provides feedback on industry-readiness to
thousands of University candidates across the country, it is still far
from the Training program which Madan is contemplating to start.
The Joint-Venture would help Madan to get out of that dilemma.

Joint Venture Potential issues

The Partnership has to be with an established player with
emphasis only on a combined marketing plan designed to help
both companies reach their goals.
Since Merit-Trac is one of its kind, it would not have much
difficulty in obtaining partners however it may face difficulties in
finding the partner who is more flexible with the strategies
undertaken by it.

Joint Venture Potential issues

There might be a potential of disagreement with the partner firm
in Merit Tracs Positioning strategy, particularly when it is counted
as major enterprise for Assessment of Candidates.
Differences in elements like Organizational culture, Delivery
tactics or the lack of communication between the two Partners can
become major deterrents.

But Why is Joint-Venture still worth all

the hassle
Merit-Trac which is currently facing a Strategy Gap, it forming a
separate legal entity for training will assure its key-clients that their
Assessment modules are not compromised.

Their initial Differentiation strategy of not becoming another

Placement agency will not be compromised.
Although Merit-Trac has a rich Assessment bank, the expertise
training, resources and like, needed in offering those services will be
fulfilled by the Partner.

Through this initiative, Merit-Trac will not only be able to expand

its segments from assessing for IT/ITES, BFSI, etc but also create
a foothold in the Education domain without compromising any of
its previous USP strategy all the while retaining its key-clients.