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.
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. |
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. |