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Vishwanath Kulkarni

More than 50 per cent of the company's 350-odd customer base in India consists of small and medium firms.

BANGALORE, May 7

SAP India Pvt Ltd is planning to increase its focus on the small and medium enterprises (SME) segment. The company plans to take the application services provider (ASP) route to tap this segment aggressively, even while increasing the number of its resellers.

Mr Tariq Farooqui, Director, Services Sector and SME, SAP India, said the company had recently tied with two other firms to launch the ASP service. While the tie-up with Maharashtra Info Structures Ltd (MIL), a subsidiary of Maharashtra Infrastructure Development Corporation, has already been announced, the company is yet to make public the tie-up with an IT services company.

The ASP service will be launched over the next three months. The company is also in the process of strengthening its reseller network, which consists of two companies — SISL and HCL, which cater exclusively to the SME segment. ``We are in the process of tying up with another company as reseller,'' Mr Farooqui said.

More than 50 per cent of the company's 350-odd customer base in India comprised small and medium firms, he added.

``We consider today's SMEs as large companies of future and there is a huge market that is waiting to be tapped,'' Mr Farooqui said, adding that the average deal size might not be big in the SME segment but the volumes were high.

With the launch of the ASP service, SMEs would be able to afford the ERP, CRM and SCM solutions as they could pay on pay-by-use basis, Mr Farooqui said, adding that there woud not be any different pricing strategy for the segment. The company expected a growth of 15-20 per cent in the SME sector, which is line with the company's global growth strategy, Mr Farooqui said. It is looking at adding about 100 customers in SME segment this year. Though the SMEs are small in size in terms of turnover, they almost have the same functionalities as that of a big company. It was because of this more and more SMEs are going in for ERM, a combination of ERP and CRM solutions, he pointed out.

The company also plans to come out with new versions of its product line, in terms of templates for faster implementation, he said. ``We are planning to come out with something like `Connect and Go' where in a customer is provided with ready-to-use software template which they can start using in six to eight weeks and reduce the total cost of ownership to them,'' he said.

According to IDC, SAP India had a 55.5 per cent market share in 2000-01, while the overall Indian ERP market was estimated to be in the region Rs 321 crore.

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