The focus for the leader needs to be on developing and scaling up the capabilities of the existing workforce and freeing himself from the day to day operational concerns so as to develop a strategic vision and direction for the business. It requires SMBs to have a well thought out plan for training and coaching staff earmarked for management positions. The leadership qualities at the top and the approach to management training can make the difference between success and failure for SMBs.

Springing from this is another challenge that SMBs face:

Human resources
This has been a consistent sore point for SMBs even as they looked to global markets they found themselves grappling with the challenges of ‘industry ready’ pool of skilled workers. Along with this a consistent flux in this resource pool has been an aggravation too. Lack of awareness of global best practices too among the workers is a challenge. This challenge looks to remain in the new year as well though the regular churn in the workers should go down. It is time for SMBs to invest in skilling their resources and getting them ready for global business.

Technology
There are two challenges on this front, firstly there is a distinct lack of awareness amongst the SMBs about the kind of benefits which technology can bring their way and where there is an understanding, of the exact benefits of technology adoption, there is ambiguity about ways of acquisition and maintenance as well as deployment.

To compound this, today there is also a financial crunch because of which investments in IT are likely to be reprioritised. Efforts need to be put into making access to information about technology easier-along with this the channels of access to technology need to be made easier too. SMBs will, given the current situation, need to exploit all the feature of the current technology deployed this entails an optimal use of technology. Also SMBs now need to increasingly engage with their partners so that they get to understand how best to get more out of IT.

In the recent years there has been an increased focus on the Small and Medium Business sector in India. The SMBs have been in the limelight as they are being viewed as agents of growth for the economy. There has also been a lot of government thrust in this direction with various policies being redesigned to boost the growth of this sector. A lot still remains to be done in terms of helping them with the relevant technology to remain globally competitive.

Along with this, the SMBs need to develop self reliance and evolve as entities resilient to cycles of economic downturn .Over and above all else it is important to understand that these challenges are just another side of the same coin as they inspire SMBs to take it upon them to raise their credit worthiness and improve the use of their IT infrastructure and inverst in their HR-once the upturn arrives those SMBs which have managed to work around the current challenges will truly emerge as stars.

The author is Group Director, Small and Medium Enterprise, Microsoft India.