MAIA holds discussion on ERP

New Delhi : To empower SMB business nationwide MAIA Intelligence has
rolled out the SMB offerings putting software services companies, ISVs and
resellers in driver's seat. The event was held on Nov 22 at Parle International.
The focus of the event was to highlight the opportunities for channels with MAIA
Intelligence BI Reporting offerings called 1KEY MIS Servers for SMB.

Vikram Kole, Head-Marketing, MAIA Intelligence at the event provided
channels ample ammunition to exploit the opportunities with their existing
customers and avenues to harness new revenue streams. The SMB segment uses
applications like Tally, SAP B1, Microsoft Dynamics. Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA
Intelligence then showcased the product offering of 1KEY MIS Servers live with
on the fly usage and benefits of cubes view charts dashboard KPI and so on.
Ashwin Dedhia, CA, Director Solutions, MAIA Intelligence and Tally Guru
demonstrated connecting and extracting from such applications specially a closed
database like Tally and making it available for reporting and analytics.

A panel discussion was held on 'What Next After ERP' moderated by Dedhia. The
panelist included Suketu Shah, CEO, Soham Computers from Ahmadabad; Vikram Seth,
CEO, Software@Work; Hemant Nerurkar, MD, Mindcraft ; Janak Bhuta, CEO,
Globalware Solutions from Pune and Mehta of MAIA Intelligence. IT leaders had
gathered to discuss lot of insights to help companies move to next level after
ERP.

The panel discussion started with a question asked by Dedhia to Shah. "Why do
we need BI when already have ERP?" Shah initiated the discussion by throwing
light on the significance of BI. "I have been in ERP business since last 20
years with more than 500 plus customers in pharma ERP. In an ERP, if required we
can create 500 reports with whatever manpower needed, however the question is
how the business user will maneuver across these 500 reports from given menu,
which shall become too clumsy. On the contrary, with BI, 10 fields in one cube,
maximum 550 reports can be generated with all permutations and combinations.
There are N-number of possibilities with multiple fields. Plus all these reports
are available with a 'Do it yourself' interface for a business user," Shah
shared when asked about his views about the challenges in development of custom
reporting for each client on ERP.

While giving his views on Indian SMB business and whether they are
computerized with accounting or ERP software, Seth of Software@Work said, "Yes,
SMB businesses are more or less computerized. This seems like a situation where
even SMB companies have created lot of data from their existing financial
accounting, ERP and other process-based applications. Now there is an evident
need to unlock the value from this data and hence they are looking out for a
reporting solution."

Marking a clear distinction between ERP and BI, Nerurkar mentioned, "Both are
different. ERP is a transactional application primarily meant for collecting
data, and engineered to save data. Conversely, BI applications are engineered to
retrieve data and data visualization. Having BI only will not generate data and
having ERP only will not give actionable information."

Commenting on whether ERP vendors or application vendors are locking the
customer data and not making it available in democratic way, Nerurkar said that
Vendors should not lock the data, but make it available so that customer can
exploit their own data for further analytics.

The panel also discussed ways in which organizations and the solution
providers can look at BI as a strategic move. "Existing customers are only
giving us the AMCs, if I can bring in add-on which is complementing my product
there are two benefits. Satisfaction to the existing customer with more value
from add-on and more revenue from the same customer. Finding new customer is
always costly, so it is always advantageous to enhance the revenues from
existing customers. So we thought of BI to generate new revenue stream and used
1KEY with our pharma suite ERP as a strategic move. Hence with BI, I have seen
the benefits and there is lot of opportunity for me as an application vendor to
foresee revenues," added Shah.

Views were also sought from the speakers on whether BI was made for times
like these (recession) and why it is gaining so much importance. It was
reiterated that information must be treated like cash as its value diminishes as
time goes by. Dedhia made a concluding note that Indian market in MIS for SMBs
is growing, and he highlighted the opportunity for all, as application vendors,
service providers and value-added resellers.