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Automation in the SME Sector — It’s a VUCA World!!

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

There is great excitement amongst vendors, and OEMs as well as Telecom solution providers on the huge potential that the SME market offers. Most of them have specific teams focused on providing SME centric solutions.

Various studies, both within India and other countries, have confirmed that the size of the SME market is huge and so is their appetite for growth. Most SMEs realise the importance of IT in their agenda for growth.

Most SME owners we met, had major grouses against IT sellers, for their lack of understanding of their pain points. They complained about the "Push" agenda being followed by the IT Sellers. One other sore point that came across was the pressure to "upgrade to the latest technology" being peddled by most IT sellers. Frequent use of IT jargons and acronyms by the IT sellers only added to the frustration being felt by the SME owner. In fact the over zealousness of the IT seller was considered by many to be a major deterrent in their decision to purchase. In fact, most IT vendors/OEMs are keen on proving to the customers about the effectiveness of their technology solution.

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However, most SMB owners agree that the lack of their own involvement in addition to an improper IT adoption policy at their own end, only adds to the overall confusion in smooth implementation. Other major reason, mostly identified and agreed to by the SME owners, was the lack of an IT visionary in their own company. They feel the need for an IT Head/CIO, who can plan a phase wise IT investment plan keeping in mind immediate and long term business needs. One of the biggest bottlenecks, to the acceptance of new IT solutions in this space, that we face, is the lack of interest at the employee level amongst SMEs.

Here are a few reasons for their dis-interest:

- Lack of capability to learn and upgrade oneself

- Fear of not knowing the technology resulting in mistakes being coming out in the open

- General lethargy to change

- Fear of losing the job in case the tech skill cannot be upgraded and successfully absorbed

- Fear of losing control over information, thereby a growing misconception of reduced importance in the dept hierarchy.

We were providing consultancy to an SME, a garment exporter, on some networking related issues (same old issues- slow network, files taking ages to open etc) when during a casual chat with the customer it transpired that they had a bigger problem about delivery schedules. Almost all their deliveries were having a minimum time overrun of about 40 days. They had been approached by about 6-7 vendors, each offering a unique and the most effective solution. The solutions varied from cloud based ERP to some well known Project Management tools. The customer indicated their helplessness on using any of these solutions citing complexity and the lack of willingness on the part of the staff to adapt to newer technologies. We then suggested a simple excel based solution, which the customer was happy to implement and the staff was more than willing to use. In another case, the owner of a spare part manufacturer, lamented the lack of time to take a holiday with his family. He mentioned that the moment he steps out of the country for a holiday, their production figures go down resulting in delays. We suggested a simple solution in terms of using an IP camera, installed at the exit gate of the factory, to monitor movement of each tempo. Of course with a good 3G connection, on his laptop and/or his smart phone, he was able to view his premises from his place of vacation. I feel that most SME owners are critical of the way solutions are pitched to them. They feel that the vendors have their own vested interest in mind and the interest of the SMEs were secondary. As a result, vendors come and give solutions on such topics as IT security, Virtualisation and Cloud solutions, without understanding their actual needs. There was also dissatisfaction in terms of the knowledge level of the IT sellers. Well, if this is not volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous (VUCA), then what is!!

It's time we wake up to this reality and take corrective action. Otherwise we will continue to have large gaps in IT usage by the SME sector which is certainly not good news.

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