Productivity tools in downturn for biz transition

In this testing economic scenario enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses are under the pressure of survival. Dr. Nitin Paranjpe, an industry expert on business productivity and CEO, Max Office while talking to Usha Prasad of CIOL said that turning the focus on collaboration and productivity is required to overcome these tough times.

Why productivity and collaboration is important to SMBs today?

The economy is struggling. There is top-line and bottom-line pressure. Manpower has been cut down. Budgets are less. Under these circumstances, the employees which are left behind have to work not only harder, but also differently. Funding, procurement, sales strategy - every aspect of business needs to be altered or re-discovered to survive in these tough times. Simply put, everyone has to deliver more with lesser resources.

There is only one solution to get this done: increase the capacity and flexibility of every employee, which means increase their productivity. When business was booming, everyone knew what to do. Employees could work in silos. Now the only way to survive is to rethink and rediscover every aspect of business. This requires a lot of team work, brainstorming, and coordinated work. This is why the need of collaboration and productivity is very relevant in today’s scenario.

What according to you are the needs of SMBs when it comes to choosing desktop suites?

Typical SMB setup is compact and person dependent. Many employees play multiple roles. They may even have additional, temporary responsibilities due to attrition/absenteeism. Most employees have to work on their own.

They do not have administrative assistance or external agencies to assist them. They need immediate results and reusable processes. The disadvantage of a compact setup is dependence on one individual. From a business owner perspective, individual dependence should be eliminated while maintaining quality.

This requires tools which are flexible, feature rich and integrated. Tools which provide ease of use and reuse help in standardizing the systems. Every small business aspires to become a large business some day. The transition does not just require more funds.

It requires planning, processes, repeatability and scalability. The productivity tool set should act as the catalyst in this transition. Not only this, it is important that employees have easy and familiar tools in their hands which require less time to learn facilitating simple and complex tasks without much administrative support. There is much confusion in the market around available productivity suites alternatives – Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, online suites etc.

What factors would you recommend to an SMB to consider while choosing one?

In my conversations with existing and potential customers, I have observed that SMBs work with a few common pre-conceived notions such as 'using free office suites reduces IT costs', 'I do not need all the features of my current productivity suite', 'any productivity suite increases productivity', 'for junior, low cost resources free productivity suites are enough'.

While choosing for desktop suites, companies need to keep in mind that every feature provides business benefit. Therefore choose feature rich and flexible product. Choose a product that provides automatic updates, patches and configuration mechanism. Handling every desktop manually is the biggest long-term cost. Avoid it upfront.

Check the security and reliability of the product. Security requirements keep changing. Choose a product which allows centralized and flexible control over security policies. Team productivity is also important. A product which integrates with team productivity suites is suitable.

There are many collaboration suites available free of cost. Choose a tool which provides extensive support for confidentiality of data. Customers prefer vendors who have proven systems to safeguard data. Further, customers should ensure that there is a resource pool that is available to support, customize, and extend the suite given the needs of the enterprise.

Evaluate integration risks: focus on how the technology fits the way that people work – Can it integrate into a business process, a document management system, or the way people use email?

Finally, just buying and installing a product is not enough. You need to explore every feature and utilize the tool fully.

In your view, how liberal are SMBs in their IT spend (both h/w and s/w) in these tough times?

I would say that companies of all sizes are conservative in their spending - irrespective of the state of business. And it should be so. As a businessman, I would like to see every rupee I spend on IT to return at least 2 rupees in due course, if not more.

Unfortunately, in many areas of IT investments, there is neither an ROI audit performed, nor is it easy to do so. Productivity Suites are purchased and deployed often. But just deploying suite such as MS Office will not increase productivity. It needs to be used effectively.

If you install a new version and continue working on it as before, it will have no incremental value. Unfortunately, most of us think that all of us are already using MS Office fully and efficiently. This is far from true. Every organization needs to focus on discovering and utilizing more from this great product.

I would say that since the pressure to deliver is highest in the current turbulent times, it makes sense to invest in effective utilization of productivity tools. Productive, proactive, efficient manpower is the only way in which you can survive, grow and excel in these times.

What has been the impact of recession on SMBs globally, and India in particular?

As mentioned earlier, everyone is being forced to rethink and realign every aspect of their business. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. This process is bound to lead to a lot of innovation and will eventually lead to growth. For some SMEs, it may well be a filtration process.

Companies with poor value proposition, marginally differentiated products, low quality products, stagnant products will simply wind up. Even if economy was healthy they would have fizzled out eventually. But this challenging time will expedite their demise. I feel this too is a good thing.

Such companies can learn quickly from their failure and start something new and relevant. With staff reduction, government incentives for funding and overall lower cost of operations, it may be a great time to launch new ventures now.

All the three outcomes outlined above – put together – will lead to a stronger, wiser and more resilient SME ecosystem.