Enhancement of "Beesender" Brand Awareness in the Russian Federation

Table of Contents

Introduction

Situation Analysis
Internal Analysis
Marketing Mix: 4 P’s
External Analysis
PESTEL Analysis
Market Segmentation and Customer Analysis.
Competitor’s Analysis.
SWOT Analysis
Theoretical framework

Empirical research
Research aim and objectives
Research theoretical framework
Research method and data collection method
Research samples and sampling procedure
Research instruments explanation
Data analysis methods

Managerial solutions

Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendices

Summary

Chayeuskaya, K., Enhancement of “Beesender” Brand Awareness in the Russian Federation: Final Bachelor Thesis. International Business and Communication Studies. Vilnius, ISM University of Management and Economics, 2018.

Bachelor thesis topic: Enhancement of “Beesender” brand awareness in the Russian Federation.

Research problem. Beesender is a process-driven communication platform that just entered the Russian market. At the moment, there is a diversity of different brands presented in the Russian software industry, but no one from the competitors has a similar product as a Beesender, which serves the same customer needs. Customers used to trust companies that well established rather than try something new. The aim of the thesis is to identify the best ways that would help to enhance brand awareness among potential Russian customers for 2018.

Research objectives: 1. To conduct an internal and external analysis of the CRM Project company and its product Beesender in the Russian market. 2. To conduct quantitative research for the understanding of the most relevant existing problems that Beesender faces among potential customers in the Russian market. 3. To provide the managerial solutions of how to enhance brand awareness of Beesender brand in Russian Federation.

Research results. After the research finding was analyzed, managerial solutions have been provided for brand awareness enhancement of “Beesender” in the Russian market.

Keywords: Chatbots, omnichannel communications, brand awareness, brand recall, brand recognition.

List of Tables

Table 1. Marketing Mix: 4P's

Table 2. Customer Analysis: Benefit Sought

Table 3. Competitive Analysis Within Each Segment

Table 4. Analysis of Competitors in the Ability to Fulfill Major Benefits

Table 5. SWOT Analysis of the Beesender in the Russian Market

Table 6. Empirical Research Questions

Table 7. Events for Participation

Table 8. Social Networks and Content

Table 9. Beesender Chatbot Academy Subscriptions

Table 10. SMART - Plan of Actions

List of Figures

Figure 1. Brand Awareness Pyramid

Figure 2. Graveyard Model

Figure 3. Familiarity With The Beesender Brand

Figure 4. Overall Attitude Toward The Beesender Brand

Figure 5. Brand Associations

Figure 6. Brand Associations

Figure 7. Difficulties With The Brand Name "Beesender"

Figure 8. The Attractiveness Of The Beesender Logo

Figure 9. The Slogan Of The Beesender

Figure 10. Brand Recognition Among Competitors

Figure 11. Brand Recognition Among The Features

Figure 12. Channels That Customers Use The Most

Figure 13. The Most Interesting Content For The Customers

Figure 14. Brand Recall

Figure 15. Email Signature Example

Introduction

Relevance of the topic. In today's competitive Business-to-Business (B2B) environments, the creation of brand awareness is an essential goal for every company to achieve (Homburg, Klarmann, & Schmitt, 2010, p.201). Developing strong brand awareness is a great challenge, especially for start-up companies. The lack of necessary market power and high dependence on customer base make it even more challenging for start-up companies to reach their target audience in an already crowded market (Stokes, 2006, p. 327).

Nowadays, innovation and creativity are not the only elements that help to stand out and differentiate the brand in the competitive market. Macdonald and Sharp (2000, p.5) showed in their study that brand awareness is essential in providing information to the customers to decide between alternatives. Another study showed that brand awareness is a common factor for customers when selecting between brands (Severi & Ling, 2012, p.126). Therefore, awareness of a brand is a necessary aspect to be considered by firms. It drives customer's decisions when differentiating between competing companies.

CRM Project Company Ltd. is one of the leading companies in automating complex business processes in Central Europe and Baltic region. Being one of the market leaders, CRM Project Company has introduced process-driven communication platform, which is called Beesender. Beesender helps customers to integrate communications with business processes. At the moment, Beesender has a relatively low awareness among people. It is the first major product of the company, which is relatively new in the software market. That's why for CRM Project it is very important to generate interest in their brand. Research by Percy, Pervan, and Rosenbaum-Elliott (2015) supports that brand awareness is important for all brands, but especially for new products. They stated, “If people are not aware of the new brand, there is almost no possibility they will try it” (Pervan & Rosenbaum-Elliott, 2015). Therefore, the brand awareness has been proved as an important factor affecting the further development of the product.

The research problem is: How to enhance brand awareness of the brand Beesender in Russian Federation?

The thesis aims to establish brand awareness enhancement plan for the brand Beesender among potential customers in Russian Federation for 2018.

In order to achieve the aim of the thesis, certain of objectives have to be reached:

- To analyze internal and external environment of CRM Project company.
- To perform quantitative research in the form of a survey, dealing with shared customer’s perceptions of the Beesender brand.
- After analyzing the gathered data, to set up a clear plan of actions that would help in enhancement of Beesender brand awareness.

The research method. Quantitative data analysis was gathered with the help of a questionnaire. Ninety-five respondents filled the survey by sharing their experience with the brand Beesender.

The practical value of the thesis is the conducted research for developing the range of recommendations for enhancement Beesender brand awareness in Russian Federation for 2018. Recommendations include all necessary actions that need to be taken after the empirical research has been analyzed. The research may be meaningful from the business point of view for B2B business managers and marketers with the similar brand awareness problem in the company.

The logical sequence of the thesis:

- The introduction provides an overview of the entire thesis, indicates the key issues of the topic discussed.
- Situation analysis consists of two parts. The first part gives an understanding of the current internal and external environment of CRM Project company and brand Beesender, the goal of which is to show the significance of the research problem. The second part explores the general brand awareness theories that will be presented from various scientific articles.
- Empirical research part explains the collection process of the research that is supported by theoretical explanations. At the end of this section, the systemized research findings were presented.
- Managerial solutions part provides specific proposals for solving the brand awareness problem for the Beesender brand.
- Conclusions part contains a structured presentation of the results of the research summarizes the whole work that has been done.

Situation Analysis

Situation analysis consists of two parts. The first part represents the internal and external analysis of the CRM Project company and its new product Beesender. In this section PESTEL, SWOT, Porter’s Five Forces models were used to perform external analysis, while 4P’s model was selected for the internal company analysis. The second part explores the brand awareness problem on a theoretical level by covering similar topics. At the end of this section, the importance of the research problem to the Beesenser brand was identified.

Internal analysis

CRM Project Company Ltd. is one of the leading companies in automating complex business processes in Central Europe and Baltic region. The company has been founded in Minsk, Belarus in April 2014 with a subsidiary in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Company specializes in three different fields: business process automation, omnichannel communications, bpm’online integration with other systems. CRM Project has partnered with two international technological partners: Infobip Ltd. and BPMonline Inc. Company’s vision is to become the leading provider of non-voice omnichannel technologies by 2020.

In October 2016 CRM Project Company has introduced novelty to software industry – Beesender. Beesender is a process-driven communication platform for large companies. CRM Project company has spent about a year creating their software to help customers integrate communications with business processes. As a result, Beesender helps large companies to decrease costs and increase customer retention. Beesender brand has two type of licenses to meet customer needs for different situations:

1. Beesender Customer Center – a professional tool for omnichannel non-voice communications with customers and employees.
2. Beesender HR Bot – software to help HR managers use chatbots for most time-consuming HR processes.

Beesender is a start-up on the first stage of a product's lifecycle. One of the primary goals of the CRM Project company is to grow in sales. By December 2018 company’s target is to sell 1,000 end-user licenses. The primary sales channel for 2017 - 2018 is sales department of bpm'online. First of all, CRM Project company has decided to offer Beesender to all Russian customers that already use bpm'online, previously purchased from BPMonline Inc. The reason for that is that BPMonline Inc. was focused on the Russian-speaking market from 2004 to 2015 before going global. In eleven years a lot of work has been done, and platform attracted large numbers of Russian-speaking customers, mostly from Russia.

At the moment Beesender is used by customers from Eastern Europe in countries such as Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Besides that, potential customers are clients from the USA, Great Britain, and Australia. The research was done by taking Russian Federation and then narrowing the list of cities down to 10 with the population more than 1,000,000.

Marketing Mix: 4 P’s. To understand internal company analysis, 4Ps model was applied. The marketing mix is a model that helps to evaluate the existing situation of the company and afterward to set objectives (Išoraitė, 2016, p. 2). Marketing mix includes four main groups of variables: Product, Price, Place, Promotion (Armstrong & Kotler, 2005, p.53). It gives the clear understanding of what is “Beesender” is and what kind of objectives should be set to target customers.

Table 1. Marketing Mix: 4P's

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Product. “Beesender” is a new brand offering two types of licenses to meet customer needs for different situations. The first one, Beesender Customer Center (further – BCC) is differentiated versus its competitors by three main features. BCC gives an opportunity to communicate with clients through webchats, messengers and social networks (Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Viber, Telegram, Skype, VK, Webchat, OK). At second, BCC is based on bpm'online platform, which means that contact center consultant works from the single user interface. It gives a possibility to communicate with customers and at the same time to make notes in the customer profile or find information about client history (orders, payments, documents). Last but not least, BCC has a built-in chatbot designer. Beesender has unique functionality that allows to built chatbot by drag and drop, without program code development. It means that chatbot can be done within several days instead of several weeks.

Another type of license is Beesender HR Bot (further – BHR) – is a type of software that helps HR managers use chatbots for the most time-consuming HR processes. The product is designed for monitoring employees in the company through two main components: training and testing. BHR helps to improve the skills and control its level by using chatbots. This product is unique in the market as it provides an opportunity for HR manager to build training chatbot and to monitor employees who have successfully completed the training and who are not.

Place. To start with, the main distribution channel is bpm’online marketplace. CRM Project uses its high potential of bpm'online sales department and partner network. Hence, Beesender is offered to customers that are already using bpm'online, previously purchased from BPMonline Inc. Such customers are more likely to buy Beesender because they already trust people who offer it. The second distribution channel is Beesender corporate website (www.beesender.com).

Price. “Beesender” brand uses premium-pricing strategy. The price for Beesender Customer Centre consists of two parts: chatbot license and consultant license. Chatbot license costs 1200 EUR/year. This price was chosen by taking into account the average prices in the market. The price for chatbot development in the market starts from 1000-1500 EUR per one channel (i.e., one messenger where chatbot is working). The most valuable distinction in BCC is that BCC is omnichannel (Webchat, Facebook Messenger, Facebook, Viber, Telegram, Skype, OK, VK) while competitors build chatbot for every messenger separately. Therefore, the average price of omnichannel chatbot in Beesender is almost 4-5 times lower vs. the same chatbot from competitors. Another part of Beesender price is the Contact Center consultant license. It costs 200 EUR/year for every consultant. It is necessary to understand that Beesender is a so-called Add-On for bpm'online. It means that Beesender license can be installed only at bpm'online license. The average yearly price of bpm’online is 250 EUR. CRM Project makes Beesender price 20% less with the aim to show that BCC is a supplementary product.

The price for Beesender HR Bot consists of two parts also: company license and employee licenses. Company license costs 2000 EUR/year. Usually, one license is enough for one enterprise. Employee licenses are sold by 100 EUR per every 100 employees per year. There are no limited numbers of employees who can participate in the training. Bpm'online licenses should be bought separately at the annual price of 150-250 EUR per user (i.e., per HR manager).

Promotion. Beesender is rather a new product on the market. Therefore, people are not aware of the brand so far. That's why for CRM Project it is very crucial to generating interest in their brand. The company regularly participates in business conferences, conduct presentations and publish articles about omnichannel communication on news websites and corporate Facebook page. By publishing various articles and posts, the company informs potential clients about how the technologies of omnichannel communications are useful in the business environment. Moreover, the company is planning to conduct regular webinars and produce YouTube videos about chatbots.

Their goal for 2018 is to be mentioned in 50 Russian business-related websites in 20 major cities. The company believes that such a strategy will lead to the target customers, who have real needs for Beesender brand. For those customers who are already aware of the Beesender, the company uses another tool for getting their loyalty – a free trial offer. The customer gets a chance to use Beesender for two weeks and pay for that only in case if they are satisfied with the product features and performance.

Recently, “Beesender” was able to introduce itself and participate in “MEGA Accelerator” which was held in Moscow, Russia. “MEGA Accelerator” is an accelerator for startups in Russia that was launched by IKEA Centres Russia and GVA. This project was aimed to find out and realize innovative ideas to increase customer experience in MEGA shopping malls and beyond. In 2017, “Beesender” was chosen as a winner, the solution of which allows to educate and monitor the performance of employees by using chatbots. “Beesender” brand got 2 million rubles for the implementation of the idea. During the contest, a vast amount of new contacts were made. Presenters of the companies were highly interested in the new brand and what it offers.

All of these elements such as product itself, price, place, and promotion are the basics on which the whole Beesender marketing success is dependent. This model represents the primary communication of the organization with its customers, which helps to make minor changes to the Beesender.

External analysis

PESTEL analysis. PESTEL analysis is a general way of analyzing external environment of an organization (Morden, 2007, p.94). This model analyses the dynamic and unpredictable environment in which CRM Project operates. The analysis consists of identifying how trends such as political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal have the most impact on Beesender brand in the Russian Federation.

Political. The political dimension itself represents the extent to which government or government police may have an impact on an organization or the product. In the case of Beesender, the following political external factors are significant in strategic decision-making:

- Political unstable situation in the Russian market (threat)

Beesender mainly operates in Russia, which poses its own set of challenges. Political uncertainty decreases the opportunity for Beesender to grow the business in the industry and information technology market. The political situation in Russia affects Beesender in the ways such as dealing with various and conflicting government laws, industry-specific regulations, privacy, taxes, data transfer, and protection. For example, Russian government adopts some policies for the use of software or social media. According to Lunden (2016), LinkedIn was officially blocked in Russia after the social network failed to transfer Russian user data to servers located in the country. Research by Locklear (2017) illustrated that Russian's communication regulator had required Telegram to transfer all information about the messaging app. Telegram might fail to comply with this demand. Therefore, Telegram is risking to get blocked too. All these political regulations affect CRM Project company and the brand Beesender itself. A blocked messenger is the number one risk for the company since Beesender brand is based on the omnichannel model.

Economic. The economic dimension represents general economic factors that have an impact on organization or product itself. Beesender should include the following economic external factors:

- Russian currency fluctuations and controls (threat)

The currency fluctuations and controls could lead to the decreased value of assets. A recession might affect customer's willingness to invest in business development ("Russian financial crisis 2014–2017," n.d.). Therefore, demand for Beesender could decrease. Also, since Beesender accepts subscription fees in EUR or local currency RUB, any fluctuations between both could make the product more expensive for Russian customers. Thus, it would be difficult to compete with Russian analogs that would offer much lower price in this case.

Social. The social dimension focus on social environment factors of the country in which company operates. This element shows social trends and changes that affect how customers interact with the Beesender in the Russian market. In the international technology market, the following social external factors influence Beesender:

- Increasing number of Internet users (opportunity)
- Rising demand for online products (opportunity)
- Rising demand for high-quality service (opportunity)
- Appealing to prohibition law, which protects workers from layoffs (threat)

The number of Internet users in Russia grew about 100 million in 2017 (Collins & Grabowski, n.d.). In addressing this external factor, Beesender can offer more cloud products as it focused on companies, which use the Internet in solving day-to-day tasks. Moreover, the company can grow its business in innovating additional features as demand for online products is rising in Russia (Collins & Grabowski, n.d.). For example, new business solutions for online operations can attract target customers and increase its investments for online markets. In addition, rising demand for high-quality service creates opportunities for the Beesender to improve its customer support activities (Teleperformance, 2017). Last but not least, Beesender can lead to the closing of thousands of call center workplaces. Automation is good for businesses looking from the costs point of view — but it’s bad for the ones who work in call centers. There is a risk of passing prohibition law, which protects workers from layoffs. Consequently, the company will lose motivation to introduce new technologies similar to Beesender.

Technological. The technological dimension contains all factors that could affect an industry from technological innovation side. Beesender needs to integrate the following technological factors in its strategies:

- Increased number of messenger users (opportunity and threat)

The most recent statistics show that Russia has become one of the Europe biggest markets by a number of Internet users (“Deferred compensation,” n.d.). Accordingly, the number of messenger users has increased. This factor plays a significant role, as Beesender integrate business-processes with communications through messengers. However, the most popular instant messenger in Russia is WhatsApp (Schwartz, 2016). In 2015, WhatsApp announced that they are not planning to launch a WhatsApp API to the public (Carter, 2015). Many conversations are held with WhatsApp with the hope to reach an agreement. As soon as WhatsApp publishes its API, Beesender is planning to be in line with selected customers. Potential contract with WhatsApp means for the company that Beesender will become one of the most attractive product in the Russian market.

Environmental. The environmental dimension relates to impact on ecological aspects. Beesender faces the following external environmental factors:

- Climate change (threat)

Beesender faces the threat of climate change in Russia, which might prompt the company to transfer its servers to another location in the future.

Legal. The legal dimension contains any change in legislation that may have an impact on the company operations. The external legal factors notable in Beesender’s case are as follows:

- Newly enacted trends in data protection authority (threat)

Communication through messenger means using personal data. Roskomnadzor is the main Russian regulatory authority which responsible for general data protection in Russia (Charles, 2017, p.291). The authority controls content sent through Internet, calls, and chats. Recently, the scope of the authority has been growing increasingly wider, and the reason for that is protecting the nation from unsuitable purposes, crimes or acts of terrorism. CRM Project must be aware of newly enacted trends as it effects changing in technologies.

PESTEL analysis demonstrates a great number of opportunities and threats, which are the basis for further identification of macro environmental factors. The most relevant factors of the PESTEL analysis are the ones that influence brand awareness of the Beesender for SWOT analysis. Issues that have been indicated as threats: adaptation of policies and regulations, unstable economic situation in Russia, appealing of prohibition laws, newly enacted trends in data protection authority. Opportunities such as increasing demand for high-quality customer service, online products, messengers and new technologies were indicated as more significant factors for the Beesender.

Porter’s Five Forces. Another way to look at environment dimension of a company is by using Porter’s Five Forces model (Daft, 2003, p.254). Porter's Five Forces tool helps to understand where the power of the company lies. The analysis consists of identifying how forces such as supplier power, buyer power, competitive rivalry, a threat of substitution and threat of new entry have the most impact on CRM Project as a company. Therefore it's easier to take advantage of the company's strengths and improve weaknesses.

Buyer/customer power. There are around 100 largest companies in Russia that may potentially become customers of the Beesender, since its targets big companies from different industries. Since the goal of the CRM Project company is to sell 1,000 end-user licenses by December 2018 and to be mentioned in 50 Russian business-related websites in 20 major cities, buyer power shall then be seen as a strong. Big companies use their size as an advantage and negotiate from a position of strength. Beesender is a start-up, which doesn't have comparable power. The only one strength that makes the company special at the moment is offered a business solution that no one has and a set of expectations for the customer experience. Therefore, large companies are trying to put pressure on the fact that they are big and well known in the market, while the CRM Project just entered the market with the brand Beesender that is unknown.

Supplier power. Currently, the one and main supplier of the CRM Project company is partner BPMonline. Talking about the price of the license, bpm'online doesn't exceed 10% from the Beesender price. The price for Beesender is 1450 EUR, while the price for bpm'online is 150 EUR. Therefore, changes in the price of bmp'online do not greatly affect the Beesender. On the other hand, messengers can also be considered as suppliers., WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Facebook messenger, Webchat, Skype, OK, VK can accelerate or slow down the process of adoption of digitally based business models. The limit of use of APIs directly affects the ability to form new partnerships and manage current ones. Thus, the supplier power shall then be seen as a medium.

Competitive rivalry. Currently, Beesender is a start-up with new digitally based business model and value proposition, which entered the Russian market quite easily. In spite of this fact, pricing also should be taken into consideration, as Beesender is one of the most expensive software products in the Russian market. Moreover, there are four competitors in the Russian market that have similar products. Beesender is a relatively new player in the market. Therefore the competitor’s product might be chosen due to the customer's loyalty. Hence, competitive rivalry is seen as medium-high.

Threat of substitution. At the moment, Beesender doesn't have any direct competitor who produces an identical product and serves the same market and customer’s needs. However, that doesn’t mean any threat of substitution. First of all, potential customers may choose software for a call center. These companies also have a sales department, and they offer new voice message technologies, which can prevent new customers from buying innovative technologies such as Beesender. The threat of substitution was marked as a medium high, as switching costs from one product to another are low and customer propensity to substitute is high.

Threat of new entry. Developing a new business model and value proposition of the Beesender’s platform can be considered as obstacles to enter. However, new entrants move into the market easily, as international technology companies require much less capital and can bring large economies of scale. There is a chance that established competitors such as another bpm’online partners are working on launches of identical product and technology.

Market segmentation and customer analysis. Market segmentation means dividing the market into segments having similar needs and wants. “Beesender” is a software brand, targeting large companies (250 employees and more) that subdivided into three narrower segments: Segment A – retail industry, Segment B – telecom industry and Segment C – banking industry. The retail industry is focused on large chain of shops, with big supply and distribution channels. Telecom segment consists of largest companies in Russia such as cable companies, operators, Internet service providers. The banking industry is value oriented on all types of customers (from non-customers to high-value customers). Beesender solves the same block of tasks for Banks, Retailers, and Telecom. All three groups of customers seek for call center automation, which is extremely able for them. These industries have been chosen because they look for fast-working business solutions and cost reduction techniques. The table below represents the ability of the CRM Company to satisfy customers in benefits that they seek for. The company identified benefits as the number of channels, price for the maximum number of channels, number of tariffs. Such benefits have been selected because the company is oriented to multi-channel approaches such as email, social network platforms, website, call. All these channels help to satisfy customers by providing fast-work solution no matter from which channel the customer came from. The information was analyzed on a scale of 1 to 10 with one being "not important at all" and with ten being "very important."

Table 2. Customer Analysis: Benefit Sought

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Competitor’s analysis. Identifying competitors and evaluating their performance relative to the CRM Project will provide a benefit for evaluating what elements of brand awareness should be improved.

There are four main competitors identified for the analysis: Jivosite, Blinger, Livetex, and Webim. All companies are based in Russia. The companies have different features and strategies. Livetex allows to connect external chatbots, while Jivosite and Blinger do it only under the order. Livetex and Jivosite have simple business processes for lead generation (creating applications from potential customers), while Blinger does not have any kind of process automation. In comparison to all of them, Beesender has the built-in designer of business processes and a designer of chatbots. Therefore, it has an opportunity to bring more benefits to the customers comparing to their competitors. On the other hand, it is difficult to compete with them and compare data since they have been in the market for a long time. The table below represents competitive analysis in the range of the number of users for each segment.

Table 3. Competitive Analysis Within Each Segment

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Strategic success requires an understanding of the needs of the market and the understanding how to satisfy targeted customers more effectively competitors. CRM Project has done big analysis in order to understand where the company is able to satisfy customer needs more effectively than their competitor. The table below represents the analysis of competitors in the ability to fulfill major consumers benefits that have been explained on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being "no fulfillment" and with 10 being "very good fulfillment."

Table 4. Analysis of Competitors in the Ability to Fulfill Major Benefits

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Keeping tabs on company’s marketing performance across channels gives them an opportunity to prevent a competitor from sneaking into their content. Here is a list of marketing channels of CRM Project: Telegram, Viber, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Webchat, Skype, VK, OK. Allocation of marketing budget was concentrated on the target audience until the company will expand their reach.

When it comes to deciding which channels are worth for customers’ money, the best thing to do is decide what the priorities are. It’s not only about what others in the industry are spending their budgets on, but also to find out which digital channels, thought leaders are using to reach the target audience. Now company provides more channels and more packages to choose from, with a price to match. The price is 4950 EUR/year for a maximum number of channels.

A deep understanding of the customers and their needs helps to satisfy customers in benefits that they seek for. Three segments of the customers have been identified: Segment A – retail industry, Segment B – telecom industry and Segment C – banking industry. Understanding of competitor’s features and their competitive advantage is also important for getting more information about CRM Project performance in the Russian market. CRM Project has more comparative advantages than other companies, but it’s difficult to compete with them since they have been in the market for a long time.

SWOT analysis. In order to find successful strategies for the brand Beesender in the Russian Federation, SWOT analysis has been done. SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning tool that helps business managers to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (Academic Journal, 2011, p.9448). The most relevant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are summarised and presented in Table 5.

Table 5. SWOT Analysis of the Beesender in the Russian Market

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Strengths:

- The highly diversified range of features gives a comparative advantage to the Beesender. Beesender has a built-in chatbot designer, provides hybrid Bot-Operator-Bot dialogue, starts Chat-to-Process automatic initiation and supports 2-Factor authentication. Moreover, Beesender is based on bpm’online, one of the world’s leading platforms for automating customer experience business processes. Also, Beesender allows to communicate with customers through various messaging channels (omnichannel communications): WeChat, SMS, Email, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, OK, VK, Telegram, Beesender Webchat; customer portal, web forms; IP-telephony system.
- Beesender is very easy to use and integrate. Within a week the Beesender team is able to set up all the system. Beesender can be synchronized with ERP, CRM, Service Desk, CMS, MS Exchange or IP-telephony system. Perceived ease of use and usefulness affect attitude towards the brand Beesender.
- CRM Project company presents itself as an organization with an innovative culture. All the employees of the company bring in the ideas how to promote and support Beesender as an innovative product.
- Beesender is considered as unique technology in the software industry. Beesender has unique functionality that allows to built chatbot by drag and drop, without program code development. It means that chatbot can be done within several days instead of several weeks. Moreover, Beesender provides an opportunity for HR manager to build training chatbots, which allows to monitor and coordinate employees who have successfully completed the training and who are not.
- CRM Project is a customer-oriented company, which expects and wants its customers to compare its product against the competitor’s ones. The initial idea of making this product was to help large companies to decrease their costs. Therefore the company’s goal is to meet customer’s changing requirements and adopt set of strategies, which facilitate customers being served well.
- CRM Project is a Belarusian company, which is a very similar country to Russia talking about the mindset. Moreover, Belarusian software developers have a good reputation in the technology industry. For instance, Viber, a cross-platform instant messaging application was developed mostly in Belarus.

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