There are some business challenges that are common across all SMBs, while there are others that are specific for different types of businesses. Does IT have the answer to both? We surveyed more than 70 Indian SMBs to find out. Here's what they had to say.

Anil Chopra, Adeesh Sharma, Rakesh Sharma
Swapnil Arora and Varun Jately

There are lots of challenges that are hampering the growth of Indian SMEs—lack of proper infrastructure and inadequate working capital, lack of marketing facilities, geographical bottlenecks, govt. policies, and much more. Moreover, there are some challenges that are common across all SMBs, while there are others that are specific to individual industries. And as if that wasn't enough, the global economic meltdown has added fuel to the fire.

We did a survey of more than 70 Indian SMBs from a cross section of industries, ranging from IT/ITES, manufacturing, education, banking and finance, and many others.

A rice  mill machinery company in Thane upgraded to an ERP suite to achieve better business efficiency

Vishnu Anand

GG  Dandekar Machine Works Ltd is a  major player in rice machinery  industry which is  compelled to adopt best practices to optimize efficiency milling equipments, Dandekar aims to provide the right solution at an initial stage to rice mill owners while rationalizing their production costs. Apart from providing consultancy, G G Dandekar trades in competitively priced equipment that are dependable and durable. G G Dandekar has been in the rice mill machinery business for about 100 years. They have a technical collaboration with M/s F.H. Schule, GmbH, Germany, with view to incorporate latest design and modern technology. They have already installed rice milling plants, parboiling and drying plants in many renowned processing organizations in India and abroad.

A technology services company witnessed a surge in business performance after upgrading its connectivity backbone

Vishnu Anand

Solutions Enterprise is an IT services and technology company that provides infrastructure management solutions to clients belonging to verticals such as pharma, automobiles, banking & finance, ITeS and travel in India, England and the US. To manage critical IT infrastructure of their clients, it was very important that the company had reliable and secure communication links amongst their regional offices and customer sites. The key requirements from their communication network were Internet connectivity, telecommunications and mobile connectivity.

In coming years, growth of Indian Economy would be highly dependent on Indian SMBs. At a time where small and medium companies in India are starting to innovate their products and services to be able to compete at the global level, it has become important for them to focus on their core competences. Not to mention how IT has become a key enabler in every business, helping SMBs reduce their operational costs as well as helping in building better products. At times non-IT SMBs face quite a bit challenge before they can fully take advantage of IT. This is where cloud computing comes in. With cloud computing, its not only easier to automate your processes and take full advantage of IT, you would not have to worry about maintaining your infrastructure.