BANGALORE, INDIA: In today's scenario, small and medium businesses (SMBs) are often hampered by lack of resources and IT infrastrcuture to scale up their business with operational efficiency and better performance. The difficulties also lie in finding quality manpower in handling the respective departments, especially the IT.

Investing on various technologies or updating the existing IT infrastructure frequently is one of the major pain points of SMB when they go in for IT adoption. With limited resources in place, it's a big challenge for Indian SMBs to look for a better return on investment (RoI), whenever they invest in new technologies.

These factors, often perceived as the major pain points of SMBs in adopting IT, results in the risk of falling behind in a highly competitive industry.

In this direction, CIOL brings to you a comprehensive write-up and views from industry experts on the pain points faced by Indian SMBs while adopting IT.

Difficult and complex IT
Small and medium businesses in India basically perceive the concept of IT as difficult and complex. Thus, Indian SMBs are skeptical to open up to avenues in IT. 

With a small IT department in place, SMBs find new technologies challenging and difficult in implementing. Hence, to overcome the challenge, SMBs outsource the work.

"Implementation apart the major concern and focus of SMBs is on risks like spam, virus and security threats. Deployment of new software and issues related to security are the chronic problems of SMBs," feels Ashok Pamidi, director for commercial accounts, SMB and Enterprise with Technology Solutions Group (TSG), Hewlett-Packard Sales Pvt Ltd.

Adding any new technology in the IT department demands additional training for manpower. Since SMBs look at minimizing the number of headcounts and reduce the training costs it becomes inevitable for them to refrain from deploying IT, he notes.

Pamidi says: "SMBs prefer solutions that are user friendly and easy to operate. Complications that appear in the process of deployment and operations proves to be a pain point for SMBs who do not want to invest money on gaining new training skills."

According to him, apprehension and agreement with clients/customers to meet their demands in time forces SMBs not to experiment with the new solutions. For example, the enterprise resource planning (ERP), which was being manually done, has been replaced by the ERP package that enables the manager to take care of it at the click of a mouse button. Thus, ignorance on the usage and efficiency of software leaves SMBs in dilemma to adopt any new technology.

Regular updation of IT infrastructure a major setback
SMBs who do not set aside a separate budget for IT, are often reluctant to invest on updation frequently. Reaping the best with less investment is what SMBs aim at. Having this as an objective SMBs often look for basket full of solutions at one go.

Deployment of same solution across the industry does not help in mitigating the risk of SMBs, instead they look for the alternate solution that are available in the market, says Pamidi.

"Though IT is not being welcomed with wide stretched hands by the SMB community in India it has also not been ignored completely after witnessing the benefits that are resulting in economical growth of an industry. Especially SMBs in the second generation are responding well to IT implementation."

However, improvement in the ecosystem and robust maturity level in the medium business (MBs) are demanding. Among SMBs, medium business adopt faster to IT.

Will to invest, need helping hand
Expressing his views, Alamuri Sitaramaiah, director, sales and marketing, Fluke Networks, India, says: "Planning and investing in the right IT infrastructure that aids the business is a major challenge for most SMBs. The second biggest challenge SMBs face is in managing the IT infrastructure, which is often an area out of their core competency. It is here that Managed Services vendors and Hosting vendors play a crucial role." 

As regards Indian SMBs being liberal in their IT spending, he says: "The will to invest is there. However, they seem to need a helping hand in aligning IT investments to achieving business goals for competitive advantage."