CMC broadens focus to reach out to SMEs

CMC, known for its clients in the Government sector, is now shifting its
focus to corporates and more so to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The
latter is a segment that is eyed by various leading solution providers and
vendors too are not far behind, as they consciously bring out products to target
SMEs.

"The leading executives in the company, who have built their contacts in
various verticals over the years, make calls to prospective clients," said
Prabhat Mittra, Executive VP and Global SBU Head- Infrastructure and IT-Enabled
Services, CMC. He further said that even if there is another systems integrator
serving the client, CMC would go ahead and do a free assessment of the IT
infrastructure. This way the technical team of CMC imparts high-end consultancy
to SMEs.

Another
way that CMC is looking at to garner more SME accounts is through TCS. With a
51% stake in the latter, and its tremendous client base, CMC will leverage on it
to get the initial business through TCS. It will particularly help CMC get more
revenues from the corporate sector.

As far as deploying the solution is concerned, the company is not looking at
deploying the entire network of a particular company, but just providing hosted
services or utility services like infrastructure equability if upgrades are
concerned or centralizing data. A basic requirement that SMEs also have is that
they want to integrate their data at one place, so that if any natural or
man-made calamity strikes, crucial data is not lost.

CMC has also made some changes within the company itself. There is a unified
sales force that caters to the Government, corporate and SME verticals. "To
keep the sales personnel motivated, we conduct corporate events from time to
time and they are a part of it," explained Prabhat. In the previous fiscal,
15%-20% of the CMC's business came from large corporates. The company is
looking at increase in business from this vertical and has a significant revenue
from SMEs too.

AMISHI SHAH