Ramco Systems targets SMB segment

Chennai: The city-based company Ramco Systems Limited is targetting the domestic small and medium business (SMB) segments (companies with a turnover of Rs3 crore to Rs400 crore) for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) product Ramco e.Applications.

Explaining the company''s strategy general manager, India, Middle East and Africa, R Shankar said, "The integration to global economy, the necessity to be cost competitive and to maximise productivity per employee are some of the business drivers for Indian companies."

In addition the benchmarking with large organisations as to order fulfillment, demand management and distribution network are forcing SMB companies to look for solutions.

And ERP is no more the preserve of large corporations. Today even small companies with a turnover of Rs3 crore are going in for ERP packages.

According to Shankar, the potential in the SMB segment for ERP product is estimated to be around Rs728 crore over next five years, representing 47 per cent of the total potential market.

Speaking about the SMB expectations, he said, "Indian companies want the architecture to be simple but scalable up and outwards at an affordable total cost of ownership. And the ERP vendor must be at hand in case of hitches." While the companies cannot afford an information technology (IT) team of 20 or 30 e0mployees, they would like to find replacements fast when an IT employee quits.

Ramco Systems has won nine new clients recently, claims Shankar. "The total order size is Rs2.5 crore and the number of user licences issued is 133. The company has around 60 SMB clients."

As a part of the strategy the company is planning to increase the number of channel partners to 25 from the current level of 15.