During the lunch time I had an opportunity to have a brief interaction with Mr Debdeep Sengupta, VP, SME and Chennels, SAP Indian Subcontinent…

From SAP Talkshow-SME legend 2010

A casual chat we had for a few mins is presented as Q&A below for an easy comprehension:

Me: If I am an SME and if I have to decide between the two options: Going for SAP as SaaS (as facilitated by SAP’s partner Wipro technologies), paying a monthly rental, vs opting the traditional way of buying complete license, what will be the break even period beyond with the later will be sensible?

Debdeep: It could be anywhere between 2 to 5 years

Me: In your partnership with Wipro to offer SAP as SaaS, am I correct in understanding that Wipro will take care of both hosting and implementation?

Debdeep: That’s correct

Me: One of the primary concern for me, as a student or professional is that SAP courses are highly unaffordable. Any decent SAP module will cost a few lakhs at any SAP’s official training centers. What is being done to undo this and make SAP more accessible and affordable?

Debdeep: We have started offering SAP as eLearning course, wherein candidates can learn from home or at our eLearning centres. This saves the cost heavily and increases reach

DebDeep Sengupta, VP, SME and Channels, SAP Indian Subcontinent, set the context for today’s talk show.

SAP has been working with SMEs (Small and Midsizes Enterprises) 2006 onwards. SAP has more than 70,500 SME clients worldwide, representing over 77% of its global customer base, with operations across more than 25 industries. There is a general perception that SAP is ONLY for big companies, which isn’t true. Over past one year, we’ve acquired about 1000 customers, most of them are SMEs. This percentage continues to grow as the company attracts around 35 new customers every working day and its SME base has tippled over past 3 years.

SAP India serves more than 3300 SME customers. Instead of a regular speech and presentations, which tend to be boring, we have decided to make it more interactive, by inviting some of our prominent customers and having an interactive session with the panel and audience, to make it much more lively… Debdeep said.

From SAP Talkshow-SME legend 2010

The Panel includes Luis Murguia, Senior Vice President, SME, SAP EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa & India), Anand Sudarshan, Manipal Universal Learning, Anup Guha, CFO, Greaves Cotton Ltd and Mr Sandeep Ranjan, Founder and CEO, Prognosys e-service Pvt Ltd