‘Witness cost effective MIS Reporting for SMB customers’ – MAIA Intelligence Event Coverage
To empower SMB business nationwide MAIA Intelligence has rolled out the SMB offerings putting software services companies, ISV’s and resellers in driver’s seat. The event was held on 22nd November at Parle International. The focus of the event was to highlight the opportunities for partners-channels with MAIA Intelligence BI Reporting offerings called 1KEY MIS Servers for SMB. Vikram Kole Head Marketing at MAIA Intelligence at the event provided channels ample ammunition to exploit the opportunities with their existing customers and avenues to harness new revenue streams. The SMB segment uses applications like Tally, SAP B1, Microsoft Dynamics. Sanjay Mehta CEO MAIA Intelligence then showcase the actual product offering of 1KEY MIS Servers live with on the fly usage and benefits of cubes view charts dashboard KPI and so on. Director Solutions, MAIA Intelligence demonstrated connecting and extracting from such applications specially a closed database (flat files) like Tally and making it available for reporting and analytics. He also showcased SAP connector and Financial Consolidation Management at the event. 75+ IT executives from the software industry targeting the SMB market attended the event. Attendees included partners of SAP B1, Microsoft Dynamics , Tally, Udyog Excise Software like Godrej Infotech, Fast Facts, EBT, Apex Softcell, Effision, Syntel. The event was held for the owner, CEO, MD, VP, Sales Heads of such Software Service or Product Company / Software Dealers / Resellers (VAR). The company also discussed its latest offers and initiatives designed to build on the success of its channel outreach efforts over the coming months.
Then there was an interesting panel discussion ‘What Next After ERP’ moderated by Director, MAIA Intelligence. On the panel were Mr. Suketu Shah, CEO, Soham Computers from Ahmadabad Mr. Vikram Seth, CEO, Software At Work, Mr. Hemant Nerurkar, MD, Mindcraft Software, Mr. Janak Bhuta, CEO, Globalware Solutions from Pune and Mr. Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence. IT leaders had gathered to discuss lot of insights to help companies move to next level after ERP.
The panel discussion started with a first apt question asked by moderator to Mr. Suketu Shah “Why do we need BI when already have an ERP”. Mr. Shah initiated the discussion by throwing some light on BI significance. “I have been in ERP business since last 20 years with more than 500+ customers in Pharma ERP. In an ERP, if required we can create 500 reports with whatever manpower needed, however the question is how the business user will maneuver across these 500 reports from given menu which shall become too clumsy. On the contrary, with BI, 10 fields in 1 cube, maximum 550 reports can be generated with all permutations & combinations. There are en-number of possibilities with multiple fields. Plus all these reports are available with a ‘Do it yourself’ interface for a business user,” Suketu further added when asked about his views about the challenges in development of custom reporting for each client on ERP.
He further shared, “Organizations whether big or small are facing lot of challenges in reporting and analysis of data. ERP is capable enough for transactional reporting but they face challenge when it comes to complex analysis of data available from different sources. These challenges are creating a storm and a whole new set of requirement is emerging around the MIS & BI. Organizations have already spent on ERP and now it is time for them to invest in BI.
Vikram Seth, CEO, Software@Work said, “Yes, SMB business are more or less computerized. This seems like a situation where even SMB companies have created lot of data from their existing financial accounting, ERP and other process based applications. Now there is an evident need to unlock the value from this data and hence they are looking out for a reporting solution,” while giving his views on Indian SMB business and whether they are computerized with accounting or ERP software. “There is a huge scope in this area of MIS solutions in SMB segment,” he further added.
While answering to the question from moderator, whether ERP offering is available off the shelf with standard packaged application, Janak Bhuta, CEO, Globalware Solutions said, “Yes, it is available, but lot of customization is needed to suite the local requirement. That is where MIS or BI helps, wherein the solution providers exit customer implementation faster.”
Sanjay answered do you think Indian SMB businesses should open up using internet reporting and connect itself with its customers & suppliers online with, “In today’s situation, to gain competitive edge, SMBs would have to open up their data and share it with their customers and suppliers with appropriate security. Using 1KEY Web, customer can harness power of internet by sharing real time customer and supplier data.”
Hemant mentioned, “Do not mistake between ERP & BI. Both are different. ERP is an transactional application primarily meant for collecting data, and engineered to save data. Conversely BI applications are engineered to retrieve data & data visualization. Having BI only will not generate data & having ERP only, will not give actionable information,” added Hemant while commenting on instant customer satisfaction by implementing BI on ERP.
“Vendors should not lock customers own data, but make it available in a democratic way for its customer to exploit its own data for further analytics, said Hemant while commenting on whether ERP vendors or application vendors are locking the customer data and not making it available in democratic way.”
“It took us one day to integrate 1KEY BI with our PharmaSuite ERP application. There were some issues, but within two hours, MAIA support team resolved the same and we were able to roll out to our customers,” said Suketu while commenting on how simple it was to integrate ERP and BI.
Addressing the challenge of Excel driven culture within the organizations, Vikram said “Excel was the very first BI tool available to any organization. But as organization grows and data increases companies need to move to a standardized platform like 1KEY.”
Putting forward the example of one interaction on the discussion topic what next after ERP, Hemant Nerurkar, MD, Mindcraft said, “Cloud Computing, Mobility and SaaS are delivery models and not the solutions or the innovations. Organizations and the software solution providers should now look at BI beyond ERP as a strategic move.”
“The top 3 things which I think one could do with BI is availability of timely actionable information as decision support system, key performance indicators and dashboards available as alerts for the top management for timely decisions and actions, self-service BI available to the business users across the organization in the form of operational BI,” shared Janak.
Suketu said “Existing customers are only giving us the AMCs, if I can bring in add-on which is complementing my product there are two benefits 1) Satisfaction to the existing customer with more value from add-on 2) More revenue from the same customer. Finding new customer is always costly, so it is always advantageous to enhance the revenues from existing customers. So we thought of BI to generate new revenue stream and used 1KEY with our Pharma Suite ERP as a strategic move. Hence with BI, I have seen the benefits and there is lot of opportunity for me as an application vendor to foresee revenues.
While answering a question from audience, Suketu mentioned, “We have rolled out 1KEY BI with our Pharma Suite ERP to 15 of our existing customers, to whom we have approached with this solution till now. Once we have the required bandwidth, we shall approach all our customers and am confident that most of them would opt for this solution.”
Apart from the above, views were sought from the speakers on whether BI was made for times like this (recession) & why it is getting so much important, information must be treated like cash; its value diminishes as time goes by. Overall the discussion was very informative for the audience present and could take back value in terms of scope and the market available in the SMB segment with cost effective MIS solutions. Moderator made a conclusion note that Indian market in MIS for SMBs is growing and that there is lot of opportunity for all of us as application vendors, service providers and value added resellers. The panel discussion came to an end with vote of thanks to all the speakers and a memento being presented by Hiten Rathod, Head – Strategic Alliances & Channels, MAIA Intelligence.
For More details on the event & event photographs visit http://www.maia-intelligence.com/mis-for-smb.htm. For SMB Partner Presentation by Sanjay Mehta, click here. (This presentation is made in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007)
Posted on November 24th, 2008 by Dhiren Gala
Filed under: Business Intelligence, Emerging Trends, View Points & Perspective
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