TechSummitSAP Summit '08
A ray of light for SMEs
SAP partners Siemens, IBM, top, and Satyam, bottom-left, explaining various SAP services at their stalls at the summit. Ranjan Das, president and CEO, SAP Indian Sub Continent(L) and Bill McDermott, president and CEO, SAP Americas and Asis Pacific Japan at a press briefing.
The commercial and entertainment centre of India, Mumbai, became more vibrant as the 5th summit of SAP India kicked off on June 4. Headquartered in Germany, SAP (Systems Applications and Products) is one of the world's largest software providers for independent businesses. The three-day long seminar, which mainly emphasized SMEs (Small and Medium Entrepreneurs), was attended by over 3,500 participants consisting of corporate policymakers, analysts, SAP professionals, businessmen, technologists, SAP partners, IT journalists and potential clients. During the opening press briefing, it was informed that the revenue earned by SAP India has doubled within the last year and that it is now leading in providing business solutions to various organisations. Moreover, there are more than 65,000 job opportunities for SAP professionals worldwide and the demand is growing day by day. Keeping this in mind, SAP has opened 50 e-learning centres in India alone. To run businesses smoothly and to take them to profitable levels, there is no alternative to well-designed automated infrastructure. SAP with its software solutions helps its customers to automate their organisational infrastructure in every aspect to enable the company to run hiccup free. Ranjan Das, president and CEO of SAP for Indian Subcontinent, informed that the demand for SAP solutions is growing day by day in corporate enterprises and SMEs in Bangladesh. In fact, some business organisations in Bangladesh are already using SAP solutions. Deb Deep Sengupta, vice president, SME, SAP India, added that the firm has already signed contracts with around 15 business organisations in Bangladesh. SAP India professionals will be providing these organisations with SAP solutions. It was also revealed that SAP is considering the opening of training and education centres in Bangladesh. Currently, SAP is offering SMEs with three packages - SAP Business One, SAP Business ByDesign and SAP All-in-One. Following are brief outlines of each: SAP Business OneDesigned exclusively for small businesses, the SAP Business One application manages the entire business from financials and sales to customer relationship management and operations. SAP Business One eliminates redundant data entries and errors by seamlessly integrating the entire business through a single application. With Microsoft Excelbased drill-down reports, employees can navigate through a complete set of business data to get the information they need instantly, whether working in the office or remotely over the web. With built-in customer relationship management functionality, companies can expand online sales and provide better customer service using web-based e-commerce and customer self-service. SAP Business One helps employees proactively focus on the right priorities. Workflow-based alerts enable employees to respond to the most important business events as they occur, freeing them up from constantly reacting to day-to-day issues. The innovative, model-driven approach and more than 350 solutions from independent software vendors allow users to easily configure, customise, and extend the system to meet specific business and industry needs. SAP Business One is ideally suited to service, wholesale, retail, or light manufacturing companies with 10 to 100 employees and fewer than 30 professional users. SAP Business ByDesign
Designed specifically for midsize companies like the professional services firm, the SAP Business ByDesign solution is a complete, adaptable, on-demand business solution with broad support for cross-industry processes. Because business users can configure SAP Business ByDesign without relying on expensive IT resources, the application supports rapid changes and growth while providing a predictable cost of ownership. The software centralises business data across all departments and business processes, providing managers with insight into real-time data via dashboards delivered to a work centre tailored to the individual's job responsibilities. Companies can automate core business processes and adapt or extend them across their entire ecosystem on the fly using everyday business language. If the company expands globally, the solution offers built-in support for regulatory compliance for countries around the world. SAP Business ByDesign features ready-to-use functionality and built-in service and support. Customer service functionality is automated through a global backbone, providing midsize companies with expert remote customer support that maximises productivity, minimises IT costs, and most importantly, keeps customers happy. SAP Business All-in-One
SAP Business All-in-One solutions leverage SAP Best Practices offerings to provide midsize companies with deep industry-specific functionality. Built on the proven SAP ERP application, SAP Business All-in-One solutions also meet the needs of midsize companies that require adaptation and customisation of complex business processes as their business changes and grows. SAP Business All-in-One provides visibility into all aspects of business operations and performance. With the ability to manipulate, analyse, and visualise business data through Microsoft Excel, along with direct access to reports, managers get the real-time information they need to stay on track. Leveraging SAP ERP and the SAP NetWeaver platform, roles and processes can be configured to align with changing organisational needs. SAP Business All-in-One solutions are easily extensible through microvertical applications built by SAP partners, and through integration with third-party applications. SAP Business All-in-One offers a simplified work environment with a user-friendly interface and rolebased navigation that provides employees with easy access to the information they need. Through integration with Microsoft Excel, SAP Business All-in-One solutions offer an intuitive approach to analytics that improves the use of data for ad hoc reporting and visualisation thereby helping employees make better-informed business decisions and execute activities quickly. With industry best practices and deployment tools to guide implementation from SAP, along with sales, services, and qualified solutions from SAP's authorised partners, midsize companies achieve time to value faster typically implementing the solution in anywhere from two to four months. SAP Business All-in-One is especially suited to companies with high transaction volume, demanding financial reporting structures, distributed operations, and the need to meet stringent regulatory requirements. Author of bestseller book Blue-Print to a Billion, David Thomson, who was present at the summit, told reporters how some companies turned into billion-dollar business organisations with the use of technology. He said that it can't be said specifically how much time it could take a certain company to become a billion-dollar business, but if a company goes on the right path with appropriate technological support, it will certainly end up as a billion-dollar business at some time. For example, it took 19 months for Google to become a billion-dollar business but for Cisco Networks it took 7 whole years. At the concluding note SAP officials said that they are now focusing on developing countries and encouraging small and medium entrepreneurs to work with them. With SAP services, SMEs and corporate organisations in Bangladesh could lower costs, increase overall productivity, maintain and protect their competitive edge and position themselves well into the race for money. For the businessmen in Bangladesh, this sure means good news.
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