Bridging the gap between IT and the Business

Excerpts of Vishal Shah on panel discussion on the topic

I would focus on the word Gap to understand the agenda of this panel discussion. The wider the gap, the longer the bridge required.

Let us first understand the consumers of IT in the enterprise world. I would take the liberty to categorize them as per the width of the gap between them and IT. They are Government, Large Non-IT Enterprises, and Non-IT MSMEs.

In recent times, we have witnessed some mass impact initiatives by the Government of India. Adoption of IT and digitizing G2C (Government to Citizens) service is in its top gear. Government is one of the most prominent investors in IT.

UPI, Fastag, Jandhan Direct to Account, Faceless Assessments, the new avatar of IRCTC, digilockers, m-parivahan, CBS (Core Banking Solution), and solar subsidies are just the tip of the iceberg. They are fast and furious on their way to bridging the gap between IT and their G2C business.

Corporate India has always thrived on the adoption of IT. IT is an undisputed scale-up driver for every large enterprise that was small or medium a few years ago. They have gone digital on administration, accounts, material management, customer service, marketing, and sales. IoT, Smart Manufacturing, Industry 4.0, Analytics, and Robotics are the new bridges to cross for Corporate India. I am impressed by India’s robust startup ecosystem and the inclination of more and more startups toward B2B products in these fields. I think they will play an essential role in bridging the gap for corporate India in their next level of digitization.

MSMEs of India are way behind in adopting IT for business. We see them struggling with very basic things. At the most, they have digitized their accounts and material management.

The primary reason for such a wide gap in adopting IT for business is the reluctance of IT talent to work with MSMEs. Most IT products are designed keeping in mind the IT talent expected to implement and maintain them. These products are also designed for large scale deployment and offer many features which MSMEs do not need. For example, all firewall products have multiple bandwidth management and load balancing. MSMEs neither have multiple bandwidths nor do they have inbound traffic.

Such anomaly makes the IT products expensive and complex for MSMEs. There need to be structural changes to penetrate the MSME sector to bridge the gap between IT and business. It’s time the IT industry recognizes the collective potential of hundreds of thousands of Indian MSMEs and develops DIY products specific to their needs. We have already witnessed that Government’s subsidy policy for ISO certification was a game-changer in the MSME sector.

Very few of us know that Government gives subsidies on SaaS and Cloud Products to MSMEs. Government should catalyze the adoption of IT by MSMEs by creating more awareness about such schemes and covering more MSME oriented IT products in ERP, CRM, HRMS, PMS, TMS, IoT, Automation, Analytics, Industry 4.0, and Smart Manufacturing.