In India, the awareness of ERP has grown exponentially in the last five to six years and one can see that manual systems in various public places have been replaced by automated systems. IT companies in India providing ERP solution to various vertical market have not only changed the processes in large companies but many small and mid sized organizations in India are ready to spend on ERP system.
Today automated systems can be seen in Banks, Hospitals, Railways, Schools and Universities. Many government and non-government organizations are improving its technical capabilities and providing software solutions to people. Every growing industry in India wants to spend on automation as it helps the organization to get ahead of its competitors and also regulate various procedures with ease.
ERP is being adopted everywhere and even small factories and shops are ready to spend on it to prevent delays and to reduce expense.
Challenges for ERP solution provider in India
1. The cost of ERP implementation is very high and many mid-sized growing Indian companies may not prefer to allocate resources for implementation of systems if it requires funds for other business and development projects. In India companies prefer to hire people to do most of the jobs instead of software systems because trained and specialized human resource is cheap as compared to other parts of the world.
2. Many companies hesitate in spending on ERP due to unforeseen risks and challenges.
3. Most of the Indian midsized companies follow different processes which cannot be fulfilled by standard products; therefore, companies require highly customized products which can only be provided by local vendors that provide highly customized systems.
4. Financial modules for Indian markets should follow Indian standards, and rules and regulation.
5. Earlier ERP provided back office automation but now the systems are used for management process and it should handle front office functionalities.
6. One of the major challenges of enterprise resource planning is to shift from one technology to other as it can cause heavy expenses and it may even pose other risks.
7. Many Indian companies do not wish to spend on systems which are not directly involved in generating profits.
Demand in Indian market is growing
There are different sections of buyers in Indian market and although, the large multi-national organizations prefer to spend on SAP, Oracle, but for midsized SMBs these global vendors are too expensive and therefore, most of the Indian companies prefer to buy customized products from local vendors.
The second major priority of buyers in India is the cost and most of the Indian companies do not want to spend on expensive ERP systems because systems not only take time to implement, it also needs expense on annual maintenance and license.
The leading Indian ERP providers sell ERPs for low price and provide solutions which can be implemented in less time of six to eight weeks.
SAP introduced the Value Added Resellers to attract Indian SME segment. There are many other providers of ERP in India such as JD Edwards, Microsoft, Infosys, Oracle, Eastern Software Systems, Vishesh Infotech etc. The commonly used software in many small and mid-sized companies is Tally.
