SAP ups its thrust in the SMB market

SAP India has announced that it is increasing its thrust on the rapidly growing small and medium business (SMB) market.

The company announced that during the first quarter of current year it has already signed up 30 customers in the segment as compared to the 75 customers it won during the whole of 2004.

Presently, SAP India has over 300 SMB customers and going forward, SAP sees its small and medium business growing at 2.5 to 3 times that of the Indian market.

Said Pranay Mittal, director, SMB Operations, SAP Asia Pacific: "The need to address market challenges on a real-time basis and the need for improved compliance are driving SMB businesses to integrate business information into a single version of truth across the organisation for effective and efficient decision-making. We are meeting the demand with mySAP solution for the market."

The company, to further penetrate the market, is also expanding its partner ecosystem. In 2004, SAP India added 5 new SMB partners, taking the number of its partners to 10. mySAP All-in-One partners in India includes OBT Global, Siemens Information Systems, Bristlecone, Tata Steel, Wipro, CVS IT, Genovate, Unisoft, Caritor and Spectrasoft.

SAP's SMB solutions are sold through the certified SAP All-in-One partners who, in turn, understand the needs of small and mid-sized companies as well as the industry's best practices.

These partners build micro-vertical solutions based on the mySAP All-in-One platform, which is qualified by SAP before being rolled out to customers. Today, SAP India's SMB partners offer five qualified solutions to Indian SMBs. A further five solutions are under its various stages of being qualified by SAP.

Added Srinivas Rao, director, sales (SMB), SAP India: "Going forward, SAP and our partners will continue to aggressively go after the SMB software market by delivering business solutions that help our customers achieve their goals."