Cloud technologies help firms grow faster

Small players also experimenting with these cost effective solutions

New-age small and medium entrepreneurs with and without IT background are spearheading a revolution in conventional business practices by incorporating cloud-based applications.

The number of such entrepreneurs may be small today and is mainly restricted to those in service sector, but their success stories are being emulated by others. Small players in tier-II and tier-III towns are also experimenting with these cost-effective IT solutions to proliferate their businesses and explore the fast growing markets in their repective fields.   
 
Gurmeet Singh Chawla, a director at Ludhiana based Master Capital Services Ltd, who was apprehensive earlier, today believes investment in cloud computing and mobile application technology support from Microsoft can give a real boost to the company's business, despite reducing margins.  

"As our business and customer base has grown significantly, we have realized the benefits of using cloud based technologies, as it has introduced efficiencies while reducing manpower costs. The result is that our per-customer servicing cost has come down resulting in higher return on investment. Using the robust technology base we have been able to grow our customer base from 10,000 to 100,000 in last ten years," Chawla says.

Yogesh Shah, Director of iResearch, a market research outfit headquartered at Pune that adopted cloud computing only a year ago, says that it has helped in accelarating reseach and value addition to the new products.

"There is a cost saving in terms of time, no data loss in the communication and meeting organised with global clients," he says. For Shah, its is 20% cost saving in infrastructure (the investment in servers is a dead investment, he says), 30% cost saving in manpower and growth in business by expanding at a low cost.

A recent research commissioned by Microsoft Corp and independently conducted by The Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm and advisor on business strategy, shows that SMEs that adopted IT created more new jobs and drove more revenue growth over the past three years compared to SMEs using little technology.

The BCG report, Ahead of the Curve: Lessons on Technology and Growth from Small Business Leaders, found that if more SMEs in India adopt the latest IT tools there is potential for SME revenue to grow by $56 billion and create 1.1 million new jobs.

"SMEs are a critical growth engine for jobs and economies today. The need for investment in hardware, software, and technical expertise was previously a large barrier for SMEs in India to benefit from IT. Today, the availability of services being delivered through pay-as-you-use cloud computing is enabling SMEs to substantially reduce upfront investments in server and networking infrastructure and direct capital to other areas that can drive growth.The aim is to help more SMEs transition to, and benefit from the solutions that are shaping businesses today, through our geo-expansion program and extensive partner network," said Meetul Patel, General Manager - SMS&P (small and medium solutions and partners), Microsoft India.

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Sharing his experience about how adopting the latest technology solutions helped grow the business, Rakesh Patni, Deputy General Manager-IT, Vaibhav Global Limited, said, "We deployed Microsoft technologies as they provide enterprise-class security, reliable and robust solutions for our operations. As our business and customer base is growing rapidly across Globe, we have realized the benefits of using Microsoft Office 365 –- it has introduced efficiencies while reducing communication and travel expenses. Specially, Microsoft Exchange Online –- a part of Office 365 -– that provides a 50 GB mailbox enabling users to receive and send emails without worrying about the loss of data in the due course of time."

Manoj Kanjan, CTO, Telemart Shopping Network Pvt Ltd, said, "Microsoft’s mobility solutions have played a significant role in helping us expand our business. It has made us more efficient and given us a better understanding of how we’re performing. It has helped streamline customer relationships and reduced turnaround time to take advantage of more opportunities. All in all, it has helped us get better control over our operations, reach newer markets and grow our business. We believe investment in cloud computing and mobile application technology support has given a real boost to our business, despite the current competitive scenario. The cloud based technology solutions can help the SMEs who do not have the capability of supporting large IT teams so that they get enterprise-class technology solutions while lowering total cost of ownership."