Nokia India to deploy Tej

Cellular giant Nokia India revealed a joint initiative with Sify to deploy Nokia Tej, a hosted mobile order management service designed to help SMEs manage sales orders and track information on the go, states Express Computer.

Through this initiative, Sify will integrate Nokia Tej into its existing portfolio of products and services such as Forum. This is expected to address SME needs.

This association is aimed to assist businesses in their use of technology for competitive leveraging. Gartner predicts that enterprise spending on technology is likely to reach approximately $89 billion in India by 2013.

A florist and a recruitment firm are only two of the many SMEs that have benefited from the ongoing roll-out of Singapore's all-fibre, ultra-high-speed broadband network, writes Today Online.

Their experience suggests that 2011 may be a year in which many more SMEs in the country can look forward to higher productivity and lower costs, the publication adds.

"Previously, we were on a six-megabit plan and we had a lot of people sharing this broadband," says Ryan Chioh, managing director of Far East Flora. As a result, Far East's customer service officers, who took orders on the phone and via the Internet, were not able to respond fast enough to customers, he adds.

Two agencies that are supposed to be helping SMEs may be doing them a disservice by courting large corporate sponsors in their competition to secure rights for a home shopping channel exclusively for products of the small enterprises, notes the Korea JoongAng Daily.

Experts worry that what is best for those corporate sponsors is not necessarily best for the SMEs that the shopping channel is intended to benefit.

In an industry with just five home shopping channels, the approval of another is an attractive prospect for the two agencies.