Technology experts from across the country are of the opinion that industry associations and the government should seek to promote adoption of advanced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions among SMEs to help boost their productivity.

“ERP is extremely important under the current scenario when most SMEs, especially the manufacturing-based ones, need to invest a lot of capital on input costs. Advanced ERP solutions can help SMEs reduce their production costs considerably. We at TANTSIA often arrange ERP awareness programmes for SMEs to acquaint them with ERP procedures,” said K Gopalakrishnan, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Small and Tiny Industries Association (TANSTIA) to a Bizxchange correspondent.

According to industry experts, less than 20% SMEs use updated ERP products, which indicates the lack of awareness about ERP benefits among most SMEs.

In this context, Devinder Gupta, proprietor of Brown and Blue, a small-sized unit in New Delhi, which is engaged in offset printing of books said, “ERP packages come in really low prices now, so it should be easy for SMEs to adopt the same. ERP has made accounting and data maintenance processes a lot easier than before and it does not require much manpower to implement it.”

Interestingly, the total market potential for ERP in the country stands at US$470 million with SMEs comprising 45% of the total share.