As part of a driving economy on the African continent, South African SMEs will take a lead in key IT investments, says Manoj Patel, senior marketing manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at FrontRange Solutions.
Patel believes SA and the sub-Saharan region will invest a major part of their gross domestic products in innovative technologies.
“South Africa, as a locomotive for the African continent - supported by government's new IT initiatives while cooperating with key countries like US, western Europe, India and China - has many new projects in place, such as e-government,” he notes.
However, Patel says that while South African SMEs are willing to invest in new initiatives, they are cautious at the same time.
Quoting a Gartner source, Patel points out that the local market will grow from $54 million in 2010 to $87 million in 2013, in regards to IT service, asset as well as application management.
Nonetheless, he points out that SMEs are finding it difficult to provide IT solutions in their organisations because many of them incorrectly focus on low priority outcomes.
To avert this, Patel advises that SMEs document their business value-based IT solutions first before creating the required set of solutions and repeatable services that can be ordered by internal and external business customers.
“SMEs should have insights on the people, processes and tools fundamental for business requirements. They also should 'market' the solutions in the organisation”, says Patel.
He adds that the other reason why SMEs face complexities in providing IT solutions is because IT professionals often confuse processes, technologies and platforms with IT services.
“Resolving that confusion and changing the language that IT organisations use when discussing IT solutions is essential to building credibility with the business from an SME perspective,” he says.
Patel also advises SMEs to bundle related service and solution components into service offerings that make sense to an organisation and business customers by providing a clear path of integration capabilities among existing solutions and add-ons.
“Providing fully integrated platforms for IT service management and asset management solutions also significantly reduces the total cost of ownership and fastens return on investment for a given project,” Patel points out.
Greg Wilson, MD of Reflex Solutions, says: “Local SMEs do have potential, although they are finding the provision of IT services in their organisations difficult as there is a lack of skills and depth in providers offering services.”
He adds that SMEs are prepared to invest in IT if they have confidence that the solution will work.
Wilson also believes there is hesitance among SMEs to take a risk on new technologies. “There remains a perception among SMEs that new products like virtualisation are only of interest to the national and multinational market spaces.”
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