SAP India Offers SAP Ariba Free for SMEs for Specific Period

With SMEs and MSMEs gaining ground for economic recovery battle and government is setting its tone to stand with them, in the COVID-19 lockdown phase, global leader in enterprise software maker SAP has made the announcement to offer SAP Ariba spend management solutions for free for 90 days in a bid handhold them.

With the advent of COVID-19 and COVID-19 Lockdown, role of technology have exponentially grown to higher levels. In fact several experts are also believing that this is a forced adoption of technology. So, considering the fact that this exponential growth of technology is a forced adoption, it is up to the technology companies to enhance the role of digital technologies once the COVID-19 impact gets on settling mode. Well in this direction organization like SAP India, Dell Technologies, Cisco, HP and several others are considered to be important entities in making the role of technology better and efficient in the upcoming phase of economic recovery.

“The current slowdown will have a lasting impact on the Indian economy. We need to handhold SMEs in the country, and as part of this, SAP has decided to offer free Ariba onboarding for the next 90 days,” Deb Deep Sengupta, president and MD, SAP India, quoted in media. As per SAP India, technology today is the grid leveller and also a competitive differentiator.

“For companies to be competitive globally, three things matter viz. leadership and vision, level of automation and skill development. Manufacturing is going back to the western world. You can compete on price and quality. Industry 4.0 is a major shift that we have seen and India is on the right track. Given the demographic advantage and technology resources, we can leapfrog with automation and digitisation of the manufacturing industry,” said Mr. Sengupta.

There’s a need for SMEs to respond powerfully to today’s global challenges by digitalising their source-to-pay process with SAP Ariba spend management solutions.

“Reduce costs and strengthen control with user-friendly procurement and contract management tools that help you do more with less. Thus, strengthen your financial supply chain through accounts payable automation and working capital optimisation,” he said. SAP Ariba currently has more than 70,000 Indian companies and the platform connects SME communities around the globe with Fortune 500 enterprises.

Ariba globally has 3.2 million suppliers and through the network, annually $3.2 trillion of transactions happen, which is bigger than India’s GDP. “If I look at the opportunity for MSMEs in India, we have only 2,000 SMEs listed on our Ariba catalogue and others are Fortune 500 companies,” Mr. Sengupta further said, “Given the opportunity, SAP has made Ariba free of charge for the next 90 days. The product and services will be accessible all over the world.”

However, In India itself, there are around 6.5 Crores of MSME organizations operating. This figure is huge in itself and out this gigantic number even a small percentage can be estimated to be a huge potential for the technology automation market.

More than, just a market, the role of MSMEs is getting visible at every level. Their contribution in Manufacturing output, as well as GDP and, in employment generation, is immense. Any effort which is been made in their development is the effort which is getting designed for nation-building.