Advertisment

Leveraging Tech for Business Growth

author-image
PCQ Bureau
New Update

You would be familiar with the SMB Forum Event that PCQuest regularly holds

across tier-2 and tier 3 cities in India, having read the extensive coverage

across PCQuest issues in past. But summing up briefly for the uninitiated, this

event has been organized by PCQuest each quarter since the last five years, and

across 40 cities. The key objective is to take a first hand account of business

problems being faced by smaller organizations and the kind of technologies being

used for growth. It provides a unique opportunity to bring together key business

and IT decision makers from SMBs and discuss such issues in detail. Between Feb

and Mar 2010, we organized the SMB Forum in Indore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara

and Kanpur. It was organized as a series of speaker sessions by experts from

PCQuest and its partners, rounded off with a panel discussion where key

office-bearers of local industry associations actively participated and discuss

ed business challenges and technology usage amongst industry.

Advertisment

Interestingly, business challenges change pretty fast from one quarter to the

other. For instance, while the first two quarters of the current financial year

saw enterprises more concerned about the impact of the recent economic recession

and were keen to find out more about technologies that lead to cost savings, the

last two quarters have shown them to be extremely bullish in using Web as a

medium to sell more. Also, while most still consider ERP as a costly technology

to adopt, they are very keen on automating business processes, particularly

those that touch the lives of their customers. However, the biggest stumbling

block is lack of IT awareness. Especially, in businesses that are run by the

older generation of entrepreneurs. Most either do not trust IT vendors and

implementation partners over OpEx or are approached by so many vendors and

consultants that they simply do not know what to choose! During panel

discussions, most amongst the audience wanted the local industry associations to

establish IT cells, where they can get sane and neutral advice on the right

technologies to choose. In some cities, the state IT associations want to extend

all expertise to the industry associations to facilitate such a move. Now, these

are encouraging signs for what seems to be a critical requirement but are our

industry associations and government listening?

The panel discussion in Ahmedabad focused on technologies

that allow SMBs to optimize their business processes and reach out to global

customers via online marketing. Panelists from L to R: Adeesh Sharma,

Operations Editor, PCQuest; Kiran Salian, APC; Piyush Tripathi,

GM-Technical, Chitra Pharma; Devendra Mehta, Sr Mgr-IT, Gujarat Ambuja

Exports; S R Bhatt, GM, Prima Automation; Sunil Joshi, Member of Board,

GESSIA; and Jyoti Bandopadhyaya, VP-IT, Torrent Power.
Adeesh Sharma, PCQuest spoke on commercial and Open Source

tech to boost business.
Mayank Srivastav, APC spoke on new data center technologies

for SMBs.
Advertisment
Kiran Salian, APC spoke on the importance of having a

modular and power efficient design for a data center.
Harshad Bardolia, Colourtex Industries spoke about their

SAP ERP implementation across various branches.
Panel discussion in Surat focused on the need for an ERP solution

for SMBs. Panelists from L to R: Adeesh Sharma, PCQuest; Mayank Srivastav,

APC; Harshad Bardolia, AGM-IT, Colourtex Industries; and Arun N Jariwala,

president, Surat Art Silk Manufacturers' Association.
Panel discussion in Vadodara emphasized the need for having

a local advisory body for IT awareness. Panelists from L to R: Adeesh

Sharma, PCQuest; Vikrant Gupta, CyberAstro Tech; Mayank Srivastav, APC;

Hitesh Patni, BITA; and Praveen Patel, president, SSI-Vadodara.
Advertisment