SPs Board Business Apps Juggernaut

Cloud, BYOD, mobile and SMART applications have commoditized business applications. No wonder,biggies like SAP and Oracle are now increasingly banking on resellers.

The business application market is perhaps one of the most dynamic markets, witnessing rapid changes. As new and emerging technologies gain momentum, the vendors of business application leverage these latest technologies, adapt them as required and ensure that the benefits are passed on to the end users. The business application sector is actively evolving and has now broken into various new branches which include mobile applications, SMART applications and cloud applications. These branches too will sprout into new branches as new emerging technologies get devised.

The new mantra for business application therefore is intelligent, simplified and adaptable solutions that are easily accessible on various platforms and devices. Apart from this, as cloud technologies gain popularity, business applications on cloud too will become a way of life in the near future.
Sanjeev Sharma, senior manager, channel sales, eXensys highlights, "Thus these 3 drivers are hand holding each other and bringing in a revolution in the business application space. As these developments are still in its infancy, it would be interesting to watch how they evolve into a mature market."

The Indian enterprise applications market (ERM) is set to diversify with on-demand and vertical specific solutions triggering its adoption, according to research firm IDC. The research firm predicted that the Indian ERM market will be pegged at $400 mn in 2013 and the market is expected to grow at an average of about 12.8% till 2016. However, it has slightly downgraded its ERP forecast for the coming periods due to the continued mindset of caution and highly careful investments by organizations.

The second biggest chunk of enterprise software, CRM will also reach about $320 mn this year, says IDC stating that the CRM market outlook is comparatively more bullish, with very similar growth trajectory as ERP for the next 5 years.
According to the research firm, both ERP and CRM make up the entire ready-made enterprise software market, barring customized application development. However, both have been hit in recent years as the Internet has become all pervasive and companies, especially SMBs have started to take advantage of the network and offer browser-based tools at a fraction of the cost of traditional CRM and ERP software.

CLOUD, BYOD AND MOBILITY NEW TRENDS...

With the proliferation of social media, organizations have realized its importance as a great way to reach out to internal as well as external stakeholders. Social organizations are turning to Social Relationship Management (SRM) Solutions or Social Customer Relationship Solutions (Social CRM) to develop strategies that can create, measure, and consistently deliver a rewarding customer experience across social properties, geographies, and channels.

As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile, enterprises are turning to technology players like Oracle to develop applications for their mobiles. Organizations are developing policies for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) as it simplifies infrastructure and employees are responsible for the maintenance and the functioning of devices that are their own, giving the IT departments one reason less to worry about. With this, CIOs can focus on more strategic initiatives, rather than spending the majority of their time dealing with helpdesk tickets.

Commenting on the transformation in business applications, George Varghese, senior director, Applications, Oracle India says, "Cloud applications is a segment witnessing great momentum not just for Oracle but for the overall industry. Oracle's solutions are built ground-up and are suitable for the cloud as well as on-premise deployment. Oracle Fusion Applications were designed, from the ground, up using the latest technology advances and incorporating the best practices gathered from Oracle's thousands of customers. Fusion Applications are the result of a massive engineering effort spanning more than six years. Its development involved more than 1,000 different customer organizations and partners, and more than 4,000 hours of requirements gathering, design validation, and hands-on testing. Built on a set of unique design principles, only Oracle Fusion Applications set a new standard for the way we innovate, work, and adopt technology. Fusion Apps are available in on-premises, hosted and SaaS form. Today, Oracle has helped more than 10,000 customers move to cloud computing, and now supports 25 million cloud users around the world."

In the view of Rajamani Srinivasan, VP, applications sales, SAP Indian Sub-continent, "Traditionally business applications have proven to be the backbone of business functions as applications such as ERP help consolidation of disparate and scattered business functions. With the changing market enterprises, customers are essentially asking for more choices in applications which are innovative, standardized, easily deployable and help in quick decision making. Addressing these newer customer demands and the need to make faster decision, further has enhanced the adoption and scope of further evolution of business applications across industries."

While manufacturing-the traditional big spender on ERP-continued to be the biggest segment for enterprise applications, an increasing number of organizations from banking, government and utilities also deployed ERP solutions. SMEs (small and medium enterprises) accounted for a larger share of the ERP market than ever before. Some of the key sectors such as retail, banking have been at the forefront of adopting business applications, as they have diversified business functions spread across multiple locations and need to assimilate data to address customer requirements speedily. Fierce competition coupled with organic growth of small and medium enterprises have also contributed to the growth of the overall business application market and the market share is not restricted to large enterprises alone.

The acceptance of enterprise applications depend on three most important aspects. These are depth of the application (process fitment), addressing of localization requirements.

Exensys has spent considerable amount of time on innovations related to these three important aspects of enterprise applications. For mid-market and large enterprises, Exensys has a well defined product line that can address close to 85% fitment for over 40 micro-verticals. Exensys has been focusing majorly on emerging markets for selling its products.

Amit Bishnoi, VP, application business, AGC Networks says, "Business application providers have understood the critical need to offer specialized services by industry type, rather than one size fits all model, which often meant business expenditure with little RoI. Realizing this strong need of customized solutions requirements, solution providers have now shifted from offering all bouquet of applications together and have now started incorporating customized business applications as per industry type eg SAP for the retail industry."

Enterprises have also segregated business models according to enterprise type ie large and small and medium (SMB) so that implementing applications are addressed basis the investment pattern, business dynamics and the required outcome.

IMMENSE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SPS

Devendra Taneja, director, PC Solutions, says, "This is an area which seems to be ever-increasing need of businesses in any economic environment. Hence it has huge potential for any solution provider to extend relationship with the customers in terms of standardizing and automating changing business processes leading to development of business applications, their support and lifecycle management. Thus, any solution linked with changing business environment needs gives us the opportunity for association with the customer."

According to Manish Kamdar, director, Rincon, one of the solution providers, "Business applications allow providers to get deeper into the customers pain areas and help forge a strong relationship with the customer. It need not be a standard product that the provider sells but could be anything that would alleviate the customers pain points. The space is growing no doubt but may not be at the pace at which we would have liked it to currently due to the fluidity of the situation all around." Rincon is associated recently with Exensys, Talentnow, C first, Jaxtr and Spielberg Software apart from its earlier alliances with OpenText and Equisys.

Mukund B of Mukesh Infoserve feels, "The SME segment in particular provides a lot of opportunities like ERP, SCM or SCM kind of applications to solution providers. The market is opening up and we are seeing a lot of requirements in these areas. Customers also want to improve efficiency and they feel the need for this. We have been growing year on year in this domain by over 25%. However this domain has its own challenges like cost of manpower, domain expertise, investment in training. We work with SAP across the entire portfolio and also develop green field applications for our customers." Mukesh Infoserve started getting into this segment 3 years back and have acquired more than 60 customers for implementing ERP. Over a period of time we have developed enough expertise.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS

The business application space today has evolved to a great extent. Earlier the focus was on the technicalities and the functionalities of the solution, but now the focus has moved to usability and customer experience.
In recent years, business applications has seen major technological advancement include more and more businesses evaluating their needs and incorporating a hybrid model where they like to keep the most critical data processes under their control ie on-premise however selective business processes are hosted on the cloud, in order to optimize cost yet be operationally efficient in all aspects.

The second move seen is, solution providers are now focusing on providing functional level applications as every business functions has gained a strategic importance. For instance, applications such as Human Capital Management (HCM), Supply Chain management Solutions (SCM), etc, are enabling better synergies by imbibing a holistic approach. Hence, the modules are now standalone with in-depth focused on these business functions are they are critical for some segments of enterprise business.

Manish Choudhary, VP, R&D & India Operations, Pitney Bowes points out, "Today, many business applications need to be used by people in various parts of the world. Workers demand mobility, flexibility as a result of which internet-based devices and platforms thrive. Localization and customization of business applications is highly complex and requires thorough preparation and coordination, as well as highly skilled language professionals."

In India, currently enterprises are in the phase of exploration and are selectively implementing those innovations in the enterprise apps front which have potential to give them tangible business benefits. There has been a visible demand growth across the segments, customers who are first time adopters, customers who are replacing their home grown or other solutions and customers who are integrating specific module or processes along with their existing application. Interestingly, we also find good demand from customers wanting additional module to coexist with their existing application, however the larger segment is customers who are migrating from home grown or first time adopters. Customers who engage extensively with global markets and organizations which are being taken over by new generation management members are the one who are fast adopting application, apart from enterprises which are growing and concerned on differentiating amongst their competition.

Anish Kanaran, director channel, Middle East, Africa and India at Epicor Software mentions, The market went through a significant shift over the years with the advent of industry specific solutions rather than blanket solutions. With the enterprise market saturating fast, there is increasing focus on lower parts of the user pyramid and new delivery models. The mid-market segment is looking for low cost solutions with a fast deployment cycle. Vendors are trying to address the specific requirements and customize their offerings to cater to this segment by making their applications more collaborative and user friendly. Enterprises who are looking at online business models are venturing for options such as e-commerce solutions which are integrated with traditional CRM solutions. Grappling with pain points, users look for more sophisticated and tailor made supply chain management (SCM) solutions.

Nishant Singh CEO, CRMnext, CRM market in India is at an exciting stage where it is expected to grow at 18-20%. As competition increases and global companies foray into India, there is an increased focus on strong customer relationships and hence CRM solutions see fast growth. In India, with multiple languages used across various parts of the country, communication with customers especially in the B2C scenario needs to be in a local language. CRMnext has launched communication template and versions in about 18 Indian local languages to personalize communication with customers."

Harsh Vardhan G, executive VP, global marketing and channels, Ramco Systems explains, "The primary expectation of any decision maker today is on simplicity while the technical aspect takes up the secondary position. Considering the evolution and moving along with the customer expectations, we have now come up with our new product philosophy, which revolves around - MUSIC (Mobility, User Experience, Social, In-memory and Context-aware). Most of the customers that Ramco has acquired in the last one year are on Cloud. On the vertical front, apart from typical ERP, we have signed a large base of customers for our aviation suite, banking and HCM, where in most of aviation and banking customers opted for the on-premise model.

LOCALIZATION IS MUST

While localization is a very critical aspect, most of the customers and vendors face problem. Conventionally many vendors would extend their products ‘as-is' and then work on localizations. Some of the vendors earlier interest of creating jobs through their certification programs augmented this model as added advantage. But, the model is now failing due to cost pressure and customer's expectations of easy and quick adoption. On the customization front, customers seem to be willing to accept common processes than pushing for many customizations; however some of the key business aspects still require customization.
"At Ramco, our cutting-edge tools like Extension Development Kit (EDK) and Partner Development Kit (PDK) help address customization or personalization comprehensively. This is made further compelling since we offer this on our cloud model, without affecting the core product," says Vardhan

BI IS ON A HIGH

With the priority of all organizations shifting towards collection, integration and collaboration of data, the demand for business applications have seen a steady rise in India. With information deluge continuing, vendors anticipate a consistent growth of Business Applications market in India especially in the areas of BI and analytics. Phillip Beniac, regional VP, APAC, QlikTech, "As more and more organizations across the size spectrum are boarding the information wagon, solution providers will need to provide more guidance to these users beyond simply selling them technology. Speaking of business discovery or data discovery-user driven business intelligence-as one of the critical business applications," QlikTech globally is the world leader with majority market share.

Kolkata based Anand Mandapaka, MD, Green Cube, an exclusive solution provider to QlikTech says, "There are 25 mn SME's in the country. Most of them have got some form of ERP like tally, some home loan system, some transaction system is in place, the growth potential is enormous. As we know till 1995 ERP was the major driving force but now it is no longer ERP, it is going down to the next level. Now there are companies on the top of the ladder and at the bottom of the ladder. The companies in the bottom of the ladder and in the middle of the ladder will now start implementing BI and companies at the top of the ladder are now going beyond BI, they are been driven by business users. They want to drive more and more information. There is whole lot of social data out in the world today. Big Data!"

"It is no secret that BI is growing faster than other areas of the software market. BI and analytics have become critical to filter vast and growing amounts of information to reach insights and decisions in the world of Big Data, which is transforming industry after industry. It is no longer a ‘can have' but has become a ‘must have'. Those organizations that are constantly endeavoring to stay ahead of competition are actively embracing user-driven business intelligence or what we call business discovery," adds Beniac.

CONCLUSION

Business application sector will see bright days ahead as it molds itself to the various global trends and adopts to new and emerging technologies. Apart from this, its growth would be propelled by the SMB sector which is one of the hottest market segments for business applications. There is a huge opportunity in the SMB segment where newer enterprises are increasing by the day and existing SMB enterprises are evolving into newer mid-market enterprises. As the SMB sector treads ahead so will the business application sector. We are therefore very positive about the future and believe that adapting to new and emerging technologies and constant innovations are the key drivers to a successful business model.