Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) wanting to grow their business and increase market share and profitability must first achieve scalability and transparency – this was the theme of SAP Talk Show - SME Legend 2010 hosted in Bangalore, at the Taj Westend Hotel, today.
SAP brought together some of its most innovative Indian SME customers to showcase how SAP solutions are being used to achieve demonstrable business benefits. The talk show, hosted by Debdeep Sengupta, vice president SME and Channels, SAP India, included discussions on why an end-to-end view of operations is critical to enabling greater transparency and accountability, and creating lean and customer-centric organizations. The panel includes Luis Murguia, senior vice president of SME, SAP EMEA & India, along with esteemed SAP customers - Manipal Universal Learning, Greaves Cotton Limited and Prognosys eServices Pvt. Ltd.
“SMEs have several advantages over their larger counterparts, including the ability to react faster and with greater focus to market trends and customer needs,” said Luis Murguia, senior vice president of SME, SAP EMEA & India. “Because of this, many have the opportunity to outpace the competition and seize market share. However, this presents its own challenges, as sustained growth requires a technology infrastructure that can scale, manage increasing data complexity while maintaining operational excellence and efficiency.”
SAP has more than 70,500 SME clients worldwide, representing over 77% of its global customer base, and operating in more than 25 industries. This percentage continues to grow as the company attracts around 35 new SME customers per working day and has tripled the SME customer base over the past three years. In India, SAP serves over 3,300 SME customers. The business software leader drives greater value to SMEs by providing pre-configured, easy to deploy solutions built on industry best practices to deliver instant and long-term results.
Manipal Education and Greaves Cotton Limited participated in the talk show to share their views on the importance of using IT solutions which are scalable and flexible enough to keep pace with developments in the business and deliver rapid time to value.
Manipal Education's vision is to be a global leader and achieve excellence in higher education. They have implemented SAP ERP ECC 6.0 to drive operational excellence and build a robust, student-centric organisation with a multi-country footprint.
Anand Sudarshan, CEO, Manipal Universal Learning said, “As Manipal prepares itself to provide high-quality higher education, and service over 500,000 students by 2013, technology will play a pivotal role in designing and implementing learning strategies that cover the complete education value chain. To build a strong foundation for growth working with like-minded partners is an absolute must; and will be a great enabler to reaching & exceeding milestones in this process. The culture of continuous collaborative learning is what differentiates our partnership with SAP. We look forward to measurable returns that will optimize the value of our IT investment.”
Greaves Cotton Limited has worked with SAP for over two years; running SAP across various areas of their business including Finance, HR, Sales, Marketing and Order Management, Materials Management and Manufacturing, Maintenance, Quality Management and Business Intelligence. This has resulted in significant benefits in optimized inventory, employee and payroll management and financial closure time cycle.
Anup Guha, CFO, Greaves Cotton Limited commented, “As an organisation we constantly seek opportunities to reinvent ourselves. A collaborative approach to innovation builds a spectrum of skills, fresh ideas and new products. As we realize our expansion plans, Greaves Cotton requires an integrated set of applications with built-in best practices that surpass functional depth to track budgets and ensure effective utilization of resources. SAP understands our unique requirements and facilitates enhanced business network collaboration, enabling us to be more competitive while accelerating our business outcomes.”
The customer panel was also attended by Prognosys eServices Pvt. Ltd, the first SAP Business ByDesign charter client in India. Having accumulated detailed intelligence on nearly 500,000 Indian firms, Prognosys needed a system that could track and analyze the profitability of each project, product mix, client engagement and division engagement. The implementation of SAP Business ByDesign enabled Prognosys to systematically analyze whitespace among this client’s divisions as well as provide more clarity and improve productivity.
Commenting at the event, Mr. Sandeep Ranjan, Founder and CEO of Prognosys e-Service Pvt Ltd. said, “SAP Business ByDesign is a flexible, exciting, next generation business system. The simple deployment and ease of use could revolutionize the delivery of ERP software. We are confident it will provide a scalable, adaptable platform to support Prognosys’s strategy for rapid growth.”
“As businesses grow it can be more difficult to maintain agility and responsiveness, which is why SMEs who want to become globally competitive need solutions which provide end-to-end transparency and allow them to turn insight into meaningful action, “ added Deb Deep Sengupta, Vice President SME and Channels, SAP India. “Having real-time visibility into every operational area and being able to respond instantaneously is crucial to identifying and capturing business opportunities.”
