BANGALORE, INDIA: "To overcome the pain points and challenges in the IT environment, we recommend that SMBs adopt the software as a service (SaaS) model where ever applicable. This enables them to reap the benefits of cutting-edge technology solutions without having to bother about upfront huge investments, specialized IT skill sets, etc.," says Satish Kabadi, VP - operations, e4e AppliStructure Services.

In a chat with Ambika Prakash of CIOL, Kabadi says: “The SaaS model gives SMBs the flexibility to pay, as per usage. They can scale up and down the usage as per their business requirements. This also demonstrates the business and technology marriage with low total cost of ownership (TCO).” “This way, SMBs can experience the richness of many products such as ERP, CRM, security applications, Management Suites, BI tools, etc., and get real value addition, which they would have otherwise not been able to afford.”

e4e's vision is to provide business value through services. We take these services to the next level by encouraging SMBs to use our "Services on Tap" model that works similar to the SaaS model, he adds.

Excerpts:

CIOL: While adopting IT, what are the common pain points faced by Indian SMBs?

Satish Kabadi: The biggest bottleneck SMBs face is the stringent IT budget. Most SMBs consider IT as a support function and not so much as a ‘Business Line’ function. Therefore, finance allocation is a great challenge and a pain point. This results in SMBs getting a compromised IT infrastructure and not always one that meets business requirements.

The second bottleneck is the attitude of IT managers/heads to ‘keep everything close to chest.’ They typically want to have all IT functions and operations with them. Security concerns are a strong reason to support this action. With this attitude, SMBs face severe challenges in attracting and retaining the right IT talent. And, even if they are able to overcome these challenges, they end up building a people dependent organization, rather than a process dependent organization, which may not be the best solution, considering the dynamics in the resources market.

CIOL: Do SMBs often point out any specific pain points which they think do not allow them to take a call to adopt IT?

SK: SMBs are usually unable to get the right resource to map their business requirements to IT solutions, and leverage it in a most cost-effective manner. This results in a complex, high cost IT architecture, which addresses only part of their business requirement, for which they end up spending huge sums of money.

CIOL: Are Indian SMBs liberal in IT spending?

SK: I would rather put it this way -- SMBs, like any other enterprise, will be willing to spend liberally on IT if they see some value in it. If they are able to avail the right technology infrastructure, which is a mix of People, Process and Technology, that would enable their business to become more competitive and profitable, with low TCO, they will be more open to investing in IT.