Ravi Menon, sales director – India Enterprise, HCL Technologies speaks on why the SMB sector is important for the Indian IT major and what the company intends to do for the small and medium businesses. R Jai Krishna of CyberMedia News listens.

What is driving the IT demands in the SMB sector?

IT demands in the SMB sector in India has primarily been driven by the need to adopt the best practices for streamlining the operations. This has resulted in a huge wave of adoption of ERP applications such as SAP and Microsoft.

The need for above streamlining is owing to the fact that the Indian SMB sector is experiencing a tremendous growth in revenues and competition combined with the necessity to collaborate seamlessly with its customers.

This is a common scenario today across verticals such as automotive, chemicals, metals and real estate, where the Indian SMB competes with various other small scale companies to supply to global customers by collaborating with their ERP systems.

What are the segment's specific IT requirements?

SMB companies strive to adopt the best practices across the functional areas such as financial and cost accounting, purchasing and inventory management, production planning, plant maintenance, sales and distribution, and quality management.

However, the adoption of an ERP system also requires IT readiness in areas such as hardware and infrastructure in addition to adequate IT support staff. In addition to the above IT requirements, SMB existence is characterized by factors such as cost sensitivity and a dynamic environment.

SMBs have to ensure that ERP adoption risks such as cost and time overruns are minimized to the best possible extent. Hence, the demand for micro-verticalized ERP solutions is also on the rise due to the advantages it offers in terms of customized features and faster implementation.

Finally, SMBs have to ensure that the operating costs of ERP systems are minimized so that the ROI on an ERP project is as effective as in the case of Large Enterprises. Thus minimizing the cost of maintaining of hardware and the product are also the key drivers of IT adoption in the SMB space.

Thus on the IT front, an integrated service approach, which combines Infrastructure services along with packaged applications products and services, forms the IT wish list sought by SMBs.

What is unique about HCL's offering?

EZ ERP is a unique, out-of-box, pre-packaged solution for the Small and Medium Enterprises, which comes with nine essential components including consulting and assessment, mySAP A1 License, hardware infrastructure, implementation services and lifecycle support services which ensure ease and affordability of SAP deployment for the SMEs.

The package offering assures a complete system support and maintenance covering not just individual application or hardware, but the entire IT set-up all bundled in one, at an attractive price point. Localization and pre-configured templates ensure faster ERP roll-out and lower implementation costs.

This innovative pre-packaged ERP solution will allow enterprises to automate their critical business processes effectively. It supports the essential functions of a company such as financial and cost accounting, purchasing and inventory management, production planning, plant maintenance, sales and distribution, and quality management.

EZ ERP builds on HCL's proposition of Integrated Services approach that combines Infrastructure services along with Packaged Application, associated services and required hardware. The integrated offering provides a unique value proposition that assures business availability rather than individual application or hardware availability.

We believe in transforming client's business and with EZ ERP we take away the risk factor typically faced in this segment and combined with consultative approach in foreseeing the client's needs we ensure a smooth end-to-end solution offering.

What are the benefits SMB's accrue through this offering?

Designed and developed initially for the Small and Medium industries, the pre-configured EZ ERP pack is available at attractive price points.

The EZ ERP offering ensures that the SMB customer is able to get "the best of the brands at the best of the prices" and we have achieved it by standardizing our services offering and sharing the efforts among several customers in possible areas.

Combined with hosting & tertiary services, this promises an easy path for SMEs looking at adoption of automation and best practices that an ERP brings, through a low-cost, out-of-the-box mechanism.

Why is HCL Technologies focusing on this segment?

Investments in an ERP solution are associated with high latent costs – time invested by top management / promoters, hiring consultants, product evaluations, implementation over runs, business blueprinting costs, etc.

Such factors have been a major hurdle for many SMEs to adopt world class IT solutions. Sensing this need, HCL and SAP partnered to develop EZ ERP, which enables enterprises to embrace a world class IT solution befitting both, the global best practices and the Indian operational model.

We have further enriched this offering by associating with funding agencies to lower entry costs and provide easy financing for this initiative.

Today, the IT adoption rate is the highest in the SMB sector. However, as discussed above, SMB IT adoption is dependent on the ability of the IT vendor to provide end-to-end IT solution rather than a specific ERP implementation services. Today, HCL is the only company in India, which offers consulting, implementation and managed support services across the IT value chain comprising of application, infrastructure and connectivity. HCL is a development partner and a VAR (Value Added Re-seller) for SAP, HCL's SAP practice comprises of over 2,800 employees making it one of the largest SAP Service providers in India.

HCL has over 50 SAP implementations in India. With leading showcases such as Kalyani Brakes, Insilco, Prism Cements and Crystal Phosphates, HCL's expertise in Chemical and Process industry has a successful and proven track record.

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