Topic: Technologies and Innovation for SMEs.

Author Name: Prasanna Dhanasekaran

Position: Student
Contact Details: prasanna.d@ifimbschool.com
Phone: 09590744008

Submission Type: Completed work Paper

Topic: Technologies and Innovation for SMEs.

Abstract

This paper probes the need of technologies and innovation in SMEs. The issues they
faced because of not implementing new technologies and the growth of large SMEs is
majorly because of innovation. Information and communication technology has played a key
role in driving innovation and success for SMEs. The future of so many countries depends
upon the success of SMEs as they play a major role in their economy. Considering the
technology area, broad band access was a key success, but in many regions particularly in
rural areas they do not have a significant coverage. This was the main reason why the people
they were not able to implement e-Banking, e-Invoice etc; and this resulted in loss of time
and orders.
There is clear evidence that open innovation practices were followed more in larger
SMEs when compared to smaller SMEs. So in this paper we will also see how the larger
SMEs growth has prospered compared to the smaller ones because of Open innovation
practices and reasons for adapting those practices. Larger SMEs adapted this new innovation
practices more quickly than smaller ones. And few SMEs faced some barriers, viz
administrative burdens, financing and knowledge transfer problem.

Content
1. Introduction
2. Growth of SMEs
3. Technology
3.1. e-Business
3.2. e-Invoice
3.3. Software as a Service (Saas)
4. Innovation
4.1. Open innovation
5. Issues faced by SMEs and Solution
6. Barriers for Innovation and solution
7. Benefits of Technology
8. Benefits of Innovation.
9. ERP on Cloud Computing Trend Changing Technology
9.1. What is cloud computing?
9.2. Benefits of Cloud computing ERP for SMEs
10. Conclusion
11. Bibliography

Introduction
Small and Medium Enterprises have played an important role in the growth of
domestic growth economy. SMEs occupy the important and strategic place in economic
growth and equitable development in all countries. In the Asia pacific region around 90
percent of all businesses were covered by SMEs and 60 percent of employees are working in
SMEs. SMEs are mainly focused on process and not on IT. From their point of view IT is an
afterthought. SMEs IT limitation was Word processor, Spreadsheet, Email and a Website.
They dont have the dedicated IT department also.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) played a major role in so many
industries in their company revenue, performance, and work environment. Technology is
growing very rapidly, in this scenario we will see how SMEs are adapting to change in
technology and how success their because of implementing new technology and what are the
benefits they achieve. On the other many SMEs are still finding difficult in using
technologies like e-Business, e-Invoice and so on. In the later stage we will see the reasons
why SMEs not able to adapt these technologies in their environment and issues they faced.
Many smaller companies are successful because of one important success factor
called innovation. SMEs all around the world companys start innovating and getting their
revenues increased. Enterprises started adapting to a new type of innovation called open
innovation, later stage of this paper we will see how SMEs using open innovation and
benefits they got because of open innovation. And in later stage of this paper we will see the
issues faced by SMEs because of not using Technology and Innovation in their organization.

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Growth of SMEs
SMEs made a considerable impact in the local competitiveness. In developed
countries, small and medium enterprises typically accounted for 99 percent or more on all
firms; in developing countries it is more difficult to tell, because the statistics are unreliable
or simply not available. They typical provide around 50% productive employment (UK: 45
%, EU: 66%, Japan: 72%, Developing countries: 50-70%). In 2012 SMEs will contribute 22
percent in Indias GDP. SMEs are the crucial part in supply chain - providing materials, sub
assemblies and services to larger business.

Technology:
Technology has changed lot over in the past decade. Every sector is moving towards
the future technology. Because of the new technology the SMEs can use tools like eBusiness, e-Invoice, Software as a service (Saas), and so on. The success of large enterprises
is they adapt to new technology very quickly. But in case of SMEs they have a financial
constraint because of that they cant easily change to new technology.
But if they adopt some basic technology in their enterprises they can have the
following benefits:1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Production or Service time will be less.

Can finish the work order on time.
Efficiency will increase.
Orders wont be missed.
Revenue will increase.

The above are the few benefits as well the core things which are required for any
organization to succeed in the market. Lets talk about the few tools which are very necessary
for SMEs in the current scenario.

E-Business:

E-Business is the integration of the internet and related Information and

communication Technologys (ICTs) into the business organization. E-Business has helped
the way business done in manufacturing and service sector. It has two stages:1. E-mail To have internal communication.
2. Website For geographical reach.
Is adopting new business solution worth the effort? Are the short term difficulties
involved in making the transition to e-Business worth the effort?
In virtual all cases, Yes. It is like any other investment in your business. Some
businesses look at the cost upgrading production equipment or renovating the office or retail
space or simply not worth the cost. They decide that future is uncertain and risk moving
ahead. In this sense, choosing to stay abreast of technological changes is a business necessity.
And these days, deciding to get involved with e-Business is the most important technological
decision many current businesses will ever make.

E-Invoice:
E-Invoice is an electronic transfer of billing and payment information via
internet. Companies having so many advantage of having E-Invoice fast transfer and easy
storage in a central location for fast access.

Software as a Service (SaaS):

Software as a service is a internet based application, in which all software will
be delivered as a service over the internet. Instead of installing and maintaining the software
saas can be access from internet with very less hardware or software requirements. It is also
called as software on demand; web based software or hosted software.

Innovation:
SMEs consider innovation as a major factor in their companys performance and it
gives them the competitive advantage over the other in their markets. SMEs have to keep on
innovating on their product, working style, manufacturing etc. For them it is easy because

they have a smaller group of people and process and it is flexible to change their working
environment when compared to larger companies.
C

3 phases of innovation process

Innovation usually does not take place in a given static environment. They are rather a
result of a dynamic process of a organization that involves several internal and external
factors.

Open Innovation:
Recently, growing attention has been devoted to the concept of Open
Innovation, both in academia as well as in practise. Chesbrough who coined the term Open
Innovation and how companies shifted from so called closed innovation to a open way of
innovation. Traditionally new business development processes and the marketing of new
products took place within the firm boundaries (Figure 1)

(Figure 1 Closed Innovation)

However several factors have led the erosion of closed innovation. First of all
the mobility and availability of higher knowledge people has increased over the years. As a
result large amount of knowledge was there outside the research laboratories in larger
companies. In addition to that when employee go out of organization, they will take the
knowledge along with them, result in knowledge flow between firms. Second, the availability
of ventured capital has increased significantly recently, which makes it possible for good
ideas and technologies to be further developed outside the firm. Besides, the possibilities to
further develop ideas and technologies outside the firms.
As a result, companies started looking for other ways for increase the
efficiency and effectiveness of innovating processes. For instance through active search for
new technologies and ideas outside the firm, but also through suppliers and competitors in
order to create customer value. Another important aspect is the further development or outlicensing of ideas and technologies that do not fit the strategy of the company.
Open innovation (Figure 2) can be described as: combining internal and
external ideas as well as internal and external paths to market to advance the development of
new technologies.

(Figure 2 Open innovation)

Issues faced by SMEs and Solutions:

SMEs faced so many issues because of not adapting to the technology change in the
market and not practising open innovation concept. So many medium enterprise used
technology and innovation and achieved significant growth in their organization, but some
small enterprise because of financial constraints they was not able to implement this
technology in their organization. Major issues they faced were loss of orders, poor
management of materials, time consumption, lack of IT support, Lack of finance, Lack of
marketing assistance, Lack of technology and innovation.
In case, of manufacturing sector people in the production department do not about the
quantity of raw materials available in the warehouse. So each time physical they have to go
and see the level of stock in the warehouse and make a note of it. If the particular
organization is using any tools like ERP in their company easily they understand the
availability of materials. Adding to it all the data will be decentralised each and every
department will working individually, so if you want any information they have to search
department wise to get the data required. This is a tough job if the data in an organization
keeps increasing. The solution for the above issue will be implementing ERP package in the
organization. But on the other hand ERP package are too costly which is not affordable to the
SMEs. And ERP maker also will have particular criteria to sell their package to the
customers; they will see the companys turnover. All SMEs wont have the turnover the ERP
seller asking for. The best solution for this issues is to go for ERP on cloud computing. All the
software will be available over the network as a service (SaaS). We already talked about this
in the introduction of technology.
Common issues all the SMEs facing are the in the financial side. Each time they made
any transfer is all made through banks (like cheques, Draft...) so it will long time to get
processed in the bank side. Because of that the company has to wait till the transaction is
done and then they will start the work. Due to this, time for doing a job will increase than
usual time. This will result in the loss of new job from customers. To this issue they can go
for E-commerce. E-commerce is similar to do doing business online. Doing there transaction
online, so that as soon the money transferred by customers they will know and they can start
their work and companies start looking for the next order.

Some of the common issue SMEs face was the lack of the following:1.
2.
3.
4.

IT support
Finance support
Uneven IT Awareness
IT literacy.

Talking the IT support, outside the organization there are so many excellent IT
professional attracted by larger companies and MNCs. It is very difficult to attract the IT
people in to SMEs because of less salary, and its tough to retain them in the organization
because of the attraction of the salary from MNCs. More over good professional are
expensive and its not affordable for the SMEs. All the SMEs, financial resources are limited.
This often makes the company to select to choose the options which is cheap and affordable
to them, without knowing the hidden cost in it. Later on the hidden cost will keep on
increasing and it will be burden for them. This will make them to stop the implementation at
the middle and it will create a financial crisis at the end which will make them to stop the
particular project once for all. Uneven IT awareness is a major issue in smaller companies.
People who are working in the company from the day they started and they are not aware of
the power of IT in an organization. As the time progress new managers will come and join the
company and old managers will be there without the IT experience, when this people are
working together there will lot of conflict between them because of the uneven IT awareness
between the old and new managers. Coming to the IT literacy many people in the company
will be started working group up from the start-up for many years. Some of them will be
holding the higher position in the manager. These employees may not be an IT literate and
they will resistance in change in process, because they dont want to learn anything new and
they are comfortable with old jobs. This will make the organization to work with all the old
process.

Barriers for innovation and Solutions:

Innovation has always been a hallmark of small and medium enterprises. SMEs that
integrate innovation can reap significant benefits. Studies conducted by US Department of
Commerce, revealed that since World War II, 50% of all innovations and 95% of radical
innovations, have come from new and smaller firms. Coming to the barriers they faced for
implementing innovation in an organization. There are three factors which is barriers for
innovation in small and medium enterprises.

1. Economic factors
2. Internal Factors
3. External Factors.
Economic factor consists of cost in which the innovation has to be done. Major issue
they faced was the lack of finance; this was the issue we talked about in the issue in small and
medium enterprises. Because of this SMEs cant implement any new ideas in their process or
product. Another important point is the risk involved in the innovation process, if the process
went wrong or if the budget was exceeded than calculated they have to stop the process. This
is will lead the SMEs to a financial crisis. Each and every innovation required some amount
of change in the working environment or in the product side, for this change they required
capital. Because of huge capital involved it is not easy to implement the innovation process.
Internal factor is also a major barrier in the SMEs. The barrier are organizational
rigidities, people in the company are not willing for a change in the working process. The
reason can be many. They used to do the old work and comfortable in doing it. Employees are
not ready to learn new things and awareness of new technology was less in SMEs. They think
that this will make our job much more difficult. Skilled labours were the key, irrespective of
all sectors. Because of lack of skilled labours in the SMEs the new technology cant be
implemented and even though if its implemented no labour have proper knowledge about the
particular innovation. So before implementing labours has to be properly trained. And further
barriers will be lack of information about the technology and market. Without knowing both
of the above mentioned barriers, companies create an innovative process or product.
External factors like government regulations, this will vary country to country. In
some countries regulation will be very high so that it will be highly impossible for SMEs to
do innovation in their companies. So the government has to consider this and they have to
change the rules and regulation in order the SMEs can work freely and innovate. As in many
countries SMEs have a major share in economic growth, government can consider this and
formulate the regulations. Customer responses, if the product was released and there was no
response from the customer, companies start thinking about stop innovating new product.

Benefits of Technology:
SMEs have gradually recognised the impact of technology, especially communication
technology such as computer, internet, email, e-commerce and their application on their

business. ICT and e-commerce offers benefits for a wide range of business processes. At the
medium level it applications can make communication within the firm faster and the make
the management of the firms more efficient. Seamless transformation of through shared
electronic files and shared computer increase the efficiency of the process such as
documentation, data processing and other back-office functions. E-commerce has the great
potential for reducing the transaction cost and increasing the speed and reliability of the
transactions. They can also reduce inefficiencies resulting from lack of co-ordination between
firms in the value chain. Internet based B2B interaction and real time communication can
reduce information asymmetries between buyer and suppliers and build closer relationship
among them.
E-Business can develop a more cost-effective Communication and Marketing strategy
The most obvious advantage of upgrading to e-Business is that it gives you a vital web
presence. In a n upgraded e- Business environment company web site becomes the focal
point of your communications and marketing strategy. And in an era when a increasingly
large number of people are using the web as their first source of produce and service
information, being there 24/7 is extremely important.
You can reach new markets worldwide the internet offers exciting ways of reaching
new markets that could only be dreamed of in the past. There are methods of promoting your
products online that allow you to precisely target the customers you are after whether they are
in your town or in the other side of the world. You can cut advertising and marketing costs
online advertising is not only more efficient but it is often less expensive than traditional
advertising. After sales training expenses can also be reduce by utilizing online seminars,
training, videos and tutorials. You can streamline the ordering process by taking orders online
Implementing an online ordering system allows you to eliminate manual paper work or
telephone order taking, It also offers the possibility if integrating your sales order system with
order fulfilment and delivery so customers can be up to speed on the progress of their orders
at all times. You can cut communications and telephone costs while the cost of voice
communications using long distance telephone services have been coming down rapidly over
the last few years, switching to a e-Business model offers the possibility of totally eliminating
many of these costs. Of course there is traditional email. But beyond that, there are systems
like Live help where customers can chat live with support or sales staff. And the most
recent development is VoIP (Voice over Internet) which promises to completely revolutionize
telephone service

E-Invoice benefits:Reduced costs no postage costs and reduced staff time re-keying data.
Real-time data delivery quicker insight to incoming invoices enabling you to pay
suppliers on time.
Eliminates errors and bottlenecks it can even deal automatically with issues such as
missing purchase order numbers.
Multi-format acceptance it can process invoices created in a number of different data
formats, including EDI, XML and CSV.
Environmental responsibility e-invoicing could help reduce your carbon footprint and the
impact of your business on the environment.
Security the system uses digital signatures, allowing you to guarantee that a file has not
changed since it was sent, and proving who actually sent it.
Accurate management information gives you a true snapshot of your incoming
documents across multiple finance systems, which you can use to plan cash-flow strategies.

Benefits of Innovation:
In this environment, competiveness at the company level depends crucially on the
speed with which new products can be brought to the market place and new cost-saving
improvements made. Similarly, the creation of wealth and employment depends to a very
large extent on the speed with which scientific and technological breakthroughs are converted
into practical and the attractive solutions. Innovation the ability to reap the rewards of
scientific achievement requires much more than ability to turn a new idea into a working
product. Efficient flows of technology are not enough ready supplies of finance and of
business skills area also needed. There must be accessible protection for intellectual property,
and adequate incentives for entrepreneurial drive. In short, what is needed is a dynamic, self
sustaining culture of innovation

Following are the benefits in which SMEs can have because of innovation. If SMEs,
innovate a new product in the market, they will be the first in the market to produce the
product. Because of the new product they can keep the premium prices for the new product,
so that they can get the return on investment very early than usual. And one more major
benefits of innovation is the company launching the new product can easily capture the
market share, because of no competitors. This will increase the shareholder return as well.
Coming to the benefits of open innovation, company practising open innovation there
product will go to market to the early when compared to company not practising open
innovation. Open innovation will reduce the risk on innovation, because the innovation was
not done only from inside source from outside source also help in the innovation process.
Guessing of what the market wants is having less risk. Open innovation will have a
community it will they what they want from them. All community will be integrated, so all
the idea will integrate so it is easy for company to have a look at it. Ideas for innovation will
come from anywhere from the world from anyone because of the integration. Some of the
best ideas will reside outside the organization so we can get the ideas from outside source.
Finally the cost for setting the research and development will reduce as company will get
ideas from outside also.

ERP on Cloud Computing Trend Changing Technology:

The ERP and cloud computing landscape has been changing dramatically over the last
decade. The cloud computing will be the most economical way of working for those small
and medium enterprises who cannot afford to buy expensive hardware or software.
Maintenance costs are also zero since nothing is managed or maintained in house. ERP Cloud
Computing applications have been getting tremendous following and demand for companies
battling the formidable business challenges of the day which include revenue shortfalls and
uncertainty, increasing competition, higher customer expectations and turnover, and changing
market dynamics.
Because of the tightening budgets IT manager are looking for more affordable, high
powered enterprise systems and ERP software solutions such as the web based ERP
applications. IT managers in many cases are finding cloud computing applications easier to
use and deploy thus further reducing the time and cost of meeting specific business needs
with robust, on demand ERP cloud computing technologies.

In a nutshell, the key benefits delivered by cloud computing ERP applications are a
faster time to value, minimal to zero capital outlays, minimal operational and maintenance
costs, fewer required IT resources and an easier implementation and integration. These
significant benefits are driving CEOs, CIOs and CFOs to reconsider the way they are doing
business to not only save costs but to stay competitive in the marketplace.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs:
a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new
infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing
encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the
internet, extends IT existing capabilities.
Cloud computing is at an early stage, with a motley crew of providers large and small
delivering a slew of cloud-based services, from full blown applications to storage services to
spam filtering. Below is the example of how the architecture of the typical ERP on cloud
computing will look like.

Source: bscaler.com

Benefits of Cloud computing ERP for SMEs:

SMEs who consider the latest in robust applications for business process
management, business intelligence, supply-chain management lean manufacturing, and
customer management relationship may find on the cloud computing as a more cost-effective
way to acquire the same results on premise software would provide without the SME having
to invest in multiple system on site.
Instead companies can eliminate the need for in-house frameworks and use virtual
hosted and managed services. Most MSE companies do not have an excessively large budget
t acquire multiple software solutions. On the cloud computing can help the SME attain the
advantageous benefits of technology without needing to spend in excess of their budgets for

the heavy technology investment. This approach provides the SME a better opportunity to
obtain a competitive advantage through technology, and potentially makes these benefits
more in reach. The reason being services residing on the cloud reduces or eliminates many of
the overhead expenses associated with software solutions. The benefit is these overhead costs
can be sidestepped to let the provider handle those aspects of the applications. As a result, the
SME can focus completely on the benefits without having to deal with the problem of
maintenance.
Meets Organizational Needs
For the SME on the cloud computing can be the ideal solution to best meet
organizational needs for efficiency and accuracy of data because fewer resources are needed
to run on each individual computer. Other cost savings can come in the form of an eliminated
need to purchase multiple software licenses and maintain multiple workstations with
upgrades, or any other adjustments needing to be made. Instead SMEs may want to consider
weighing out the pros and cons of using an outsourced web-based, cloud computing solutions
because this solution may remove a lot of the expense associated with upgrading systems to
be more modern and efficient.
Security and Privacy Issues
Security and privacy area often two large concerns for SMEs who are considering
using outsource or hosted and managed service. There are pros and cons associated with this
kind of decision. Trust is an important part of the equation because essentially businesses
have to be confident the company theyve contracted with will be able to maintain security
and keep data safe. One thing to consider is that statistics suggest many breaches are caused
by human error and are internal nature. By migrating processes on the cloud computing
SMEs who may not have a lot of manpower in their IT Departments can increase the level of
security by leaving this process to cloud computing with experts who are knowledgeable in
security and are able to maintain integrity of data. This can decrease the margin of human
error. However, central to this decision is trust. An SME must be able to trust the vendor to
uphold their end of the service.
Provides a Collaborative Environment

In addition, on the cloud computing can increase efficiency and productivity through
the ability to work in a collaborative environment. While it is true SMEs can get a
collaborative environment through other solutions, the benefit to cloud computing is the
concept of using software as a service (SaaS). Through working in this environment, the
SME is able to ensure compatibility, avoid e-mail attachments and other potentially insecure
methods of sharing data because all relevant parties can work simultaneously in the web
environment structured within the cloud and have access to important business software
solution applications, documents, databases and spreadsheets. In addition, decision makers
can view up to the minute data as changes as they are being made and this helps make better
choices when an assessment needs to done. On the cloud computing can offer many benefits
to small and medium enterprises; however it is not a one size fits all kind of solution. Any
business should weigh the pros and cons and decide whether or not changing their processes
to web based applications is the best solution for them.

Conclusion:
SMEs play an important role in a country economic, job creation. The key to a
successful operation in the years ahead for the SMEs is recognition of the world as a global
market and the imperative for systems integration. Changes in the marketplace as well as in
technology and innovation will have a great impact on SMEs operations. The manufacturing
and servicing strategy will be based on an evaluation of organizational needs, continuous
measuring of company strengths in design, manufacturing, marketing, finance, and human
resources; and a persisting reinforcement of participative management style. SMEs in general
face several challenges in the near future. Among them, exploiting their existing opportunities
to the fullest but this is not enough, existing opportunities will eventually be exhausted, and
todays success is no guarantee for tomorrows. Thus a second challenge involves generating
entirely new opportunities.
In this paper we discussed about the technology and innovation which SMEs can
implement in this organization. Future of SMEs depends upon how they use the new
technology wisely. Because of implementing the new technology they can have the added
advantage over the competitors. We also discussed about the barriers they faced for
implementing technology, financially government has to change their policy so that they stay
alive in the market. By seeing all the benefits of technology SMEs can think of using all latest

technology to capture the market. As SMEs are the backbone of all countries, government can
consider on their policy that would encourage the SMEs to do more productive work.
SMEs play an increasingly important role in innovation, but are nevertheless left out
of the research on open innovation, which has been analyzed mainly within the context of
large, technology firms (Chesbrough, 2003). In this paper we have addressed this gap by
analysing open innovation practices of SMEs. We identified several motives for firms to start
open innovation practise and barriers that SMEs managers encounter when they open up their
innovation process. Open innovation is mainly motivated by market related targets; these are
the most important driver for firms to engage in venturing, to participate in other firms and to
involve user in the innovation process. Most SMEs use a broad set of methods to meet the
ever changing customer demand and to stay competitive. In addition, many barriers for open
innovation in SMEs are related to corporate organization and culture, no matter which type of
open innovation practise is pursued.
Then we talked about cloud computing and SMEs, cloud computing is the future for
SMEs as it will give the high end experience with less cost. Few years back ERP was a
luxurious thing for the SMEs but now because of cloud computing on ERP, SMEs can use
ERP in their organization and can have the benefits of ERP. So SMEs can be a active part in
the countrys GDP by using the latest technology and by practising open innovation and the
future cloud computing

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