Read how a firms key business and IT priorities and their experience with acquiring, implementing, and support of SAP solutions influences business. Learn about the challenges and opportunities for SMBs, and the IDCs framework for SMBs to bridge their strategic goals with day-to-day operational activities.
W H I T E P A P E R I n t h e E n t e r p r i s e L o n g T a i l : W i l l I T M a t t e r ? Sponsored by: SAP Asia Pacific Japan Ng Buck-Seng May 2007
I D C O P I N I O N
Small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the Asia/Pacific region form the majority of players that participate in value chains of global enterprises. With the higher expectations on business performances from firms as well as increased business uncertainty and risks, SMBs are under tremendous pressure to deliver greater value, agility and effectiveness to their customers, in order to succeed in an intensely competitive market. moc.cdi The sheer number of such SMBs forms "The Long Tail" of enterprises, with significant .ww diversity in terms of their operations, challenges, needs and strategies. Considering their w scale and economic importance, the questions we ask about the SMBs in this document 03 are: where are their business and IT priorities, and what are some of their experiences 30. with SAP and their solutions? Based on a recently completed IDC survey of SMB 622 customers of SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ), our key findings include: 6.56.P Innovation initiatives were ranked the most important for helping SMBs achieve their 70 growth objectives, followed by those around operational excellence - both innovation 997 and operational excellence have the greatest positive impact on many aspects of 0 er SMB growth, particularly top- and bottom-line growth. opag ni Business intelligence (BI) is ranked as the most important IT solution for the SMBs S surveyed, to help meet their business objectives in the next one to three years. The 00-8 importance of BI to SMBs underlies the sense of urgency for many of these firms to 3# make better use of their enterprise data for enhanced and faster decision making. ,daoR Respondents also indicated that the top business benefit of their SAP solution was nos higher operations/process efficiency, followed by greater enterprise-wide business nA visibility leading to faster decision making and higher levels of internal/external 08 : collaborations. sretrauqda I N T H I S W H I T E P A P E R eH cifi This IDC White Paper, sponsored by SAP APJ, draws on the results of a survey of small caP and medium business (SMB) customers of SAP in the APJ region. In this paper, we /ais discuss these firms' key business and IT priorities, as well as their experience with A acquiring, implementing, and supporting SAP solutions. The paper also discusses challenges and opportunities for SMBs, as well as covers IDC' s framework for SMBs to bridge their strategic goals with day-to-day operational activities.
