There is an article on CXOToday by Praveen Kurup on things to be looked carefully by SMB Industry on ERP and CRM solutions. If you are interested in these areas, please do read the article here before reading further on this post

At an outset I liked the post and would like to comment on pilot, best Practices, connections/interoperability aspects mentioned by Praveen on the aforesaid article.

Best Practices are something that should not be blindly ignored. I have been in Enterprise Solutions for over half-decade now, most of the clients I interacted with have always wanted to know what all we have done for other leading players in the local and global markets and how those learnings can be imbibed into the solution that is being discussed in their business context. This can be achieved only if the prospect is ready to understand the recommended best practices in detail. Having heard the points, the assigned executive should pick up areas that makes sense to their business environment, alingn the organizations thought process and let them flow.

On Pilot, it is understood proof is in the pudding. However, if I have demonstrated the value of the solution in over a dozen sites across the world of various industries and size, the likelihood tot repeat the same with the new prospect’s environment is good, so it rather makes more sense to understand thoroughly what value was demonstrated at various sites and give adequate points to vendor on successful implementation and value demonstration of the solution, this should be treated as step-one. Having said that, if the prospect has a well-defined plan for a pilot phase with well-thought milestones, dedicated resources and KRAs, it should be done. If these attributes are not set and resources are not allocated, engaging in a POC is a futile exercise and it definetely would not draw any desired result.

I completely agree with Praveens points on interoperability and connectivity, any solution that is being considered to solve a business problem should be able to complement the investment made by the prospect and leverage more value from those investments. This aspect should be thoroughly considered and appropriate score should be given to this component during evaluation.

It is important to note, interoperability or connectivity is not about Possible or Impossible. Most of the enterprise solutions would have this feature an an integral part of the solution, the question is not WHAT but HOW it is done.

Scale differentiates SMB from large enterprises, but the data remains data, process remains process, people remain people and business remains as business. I would personally think, treatment to SMB’s should not be any different from the way how a large enterprise would be handled from the vendors perspective.