How different are Indian & US Markets when it comes to SME Led BI solutions?

1. How would SMEs gain a competitive edge over others through BI adaptation, when it is said that SME companies are closer to their customers compared to their larger counterparts?

There is no doubt that SME’s enjoy better proximity to the markets and thereby their customers but at the same time they are also vulnerable to information gap that could set-in without access to business intelligence. Business intelligence empowers SME’s with vital insights such as product consumption/movement trends, change in customer tastes/preferences, price elasticity etc. The agility of the SME’s and less bureaucratic structure they enjoy can only aid and underline the need of BI to make some key strategic decisions in their battle against the large conglomerates.

2. What makes Saxon Global’s BI offerings for the SME sector unique?

Saxon Global’s solution accelerators such as AIRAVAT and BICOE make us unique and a well-suited BI partner for the SME sector.With AIRAVAT, we provide the jump-start needed to adopt BI without having to invest in large team of technical resources. Through our BICOE, we offer certified and well qualified team of BI professionals across multiple BI platforms. Saxon Global plays the role of a consultant, therebydiagnosing the exact business goals, existing technology gaps and recommends the most appropriate solution which could reduce the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for our customers.

3. How different are Indian & US Markets when it comes to SME Led BI solutions?

Businesses in US whether Large or SME’s have largely become data driven organisations. There is an inherent demand to automate most of the business processes, thereby providing access to data from multiple touch points. This enables pushing of the real-time data for deeper insights and analysis. In India, most of the SME’s though have gone ahead and implemented ERP’s and operational systems, that are either largely driven by the compliance initiatives of the government or for the Global customers being served. In most of these cases, basic reporting without much emphasis on BI is carried out. In our own experiences, we have witnessed, SME’smanaging and haggling with the traditional excel based reporting formats, which are hugely manpower dependent. Multiple data sets are manually referred towards creation of some basic reports.

4. What are the key differentiators for Saxon Global cloud-led BI solutions for the SME sector ?

We strongly believe in Proof of Concepts and allow the customers to see the real value before they make the big commitment. We leverage the cloud platform to effectively deliver the POC with very small cost and a quick turnaround time. Our partnerships with Tableau and Qlikview further drive the BI initiatives on the cloud.

5. As a comparative what are the key inhibitions when it comes to adaptation of BI on cloud for SME companies in India & in US?

Cloud as a platform has been an object of suspicion, primarily when it comes to data residing out of the organisation. But, this is changing fast with the changing business models. If we look at all new age enterprises who have a strong e-commerce model, they largelyrely to derive intelligence from cloud hosted open source tools like Google Analytics. These are used primarily to understand, effectiveness of their advertising spends, customer behaviour online etc, we have observedIndian SME’s adopting this methodology. India is also a price sensitive market. BI solution on cloud offers price flexibility (ie; capex to opex model) with an opportunity to move from one solution to another with very low switching cost.

6. As a leading player in Business Intelligence what are the key challenges and opportunities you currently face in your key markets ?

At present, our focus has been the SME space and our priority region has been mostly North America. We have been actively pursuing the INC 500 companies which are SME’s but are on a high growth path. This is a sweet spot, as most of them have outgrown excel based decision making systems, are looking for more sophisticated tools and are looking at partnering with suitable solution accelerators. At Saxon, we assure them that they are in safe hands primarily because of the hybrid engagement models and technology options we bring to the table.

7. How would you describe your journey with Saxon Global so far, what is the road ahead?

It has been a very encouraging and exciting journey so far leading Saxon. Traditionally, our strengths have been Business Intelligence, and we have enabled many clients with their BI needs. BI and Analytics help clients with informed decision-making. Being the Big data experts, we make use of newest technologies like Hadoop to gather the most relevant information and bring valuable trends out of it.

Business Intelligence and Analytics is one of our core focuses. Currently, multiple clients ridetheir BI strategies using Saxon Global’s proprietary tools – AIRAVAT and BICOE, we are hopeful to cater to much larger set-ups managing their data analytics facilitating informed decision-making in near future.

– K. Altaf , Managing Editor, THE SME TIMES,  www.TheSMETimes.com