PCQuest SMB Forum 2010

Large enterprises have money to invest in IT deployments, the only thing that they need to care about is selecting the right solution.

But the real challenge is faced by the SMBs who have shoe-string IT budgets and lack the expertise to figure out the right solutions that would suit their business needs and could also be easily scaled up as they grow from small to large businesses. This is where PCQuest becomes relevant with its series of SMB Forum events that is conducted every quarter across various cities in India wherein we invite key officials from SMBs as delegates to participate.

Event Theme : Doing more with less

Understanding the challenge SMBs face, of choosing the right IT solutions but with minimum IT investment motivated us to keep the theme of PCQuest SMB Forum 2010 as 'Doing more with less'. This quarter we travelled to 5 cities — Hyderabad, Pune, Lucknow, Cochin

and Kolkata in August and September and delivered numerous sessions designed to provide useful IT guidance to SMBs. We conducted sessions on how SMBs can harness simple web-based solutions to empower their business and resolve some of their key business challenges. Speakers from our partner, APC, engaged the audience with their sessions on smart power solutions for SMBs that could be purchased within the limited IT budget that they have. We also showcased interesting IT products for SMBs. While APC displayed smart power solutions, Toshiba displayed printers for the SMB segment.

One of the most enlightening sessions at each city were the panel discussions conducted by PCQuest with some of the key industry representatives from each city gracing these panels. The common topic for all panels was how SMBs can successfully improve their operational efficiency using IT solutions. A lot of knowledge sharing happened across all these cities, where we saw the delegates voicing their IT related pain points and providing interesting insights about their own experiences. Each city where PCQuest SMB Forum was conducted, provided deeper understanding about IT-related challenges being faced by SMBs across these cities. In the following sections we delve deeper into the learnings from the various discussions that took place.