Spinning an IT Yarn

Tirupur is known for its textile manufacturing prowess.
With a huge export market, most of the leading apparel brands come out of
Tirupur and can be found across the world. In the last couple of years, Tirupur
textile manufacturers went through tough times due to the economic gloom and
many small to mid-sized exporters closed their shops. While there are many macro
economic factors that affect the textile industry in this part of the world, the
units that sustained the market lull are the ones which managed the supply and
demand well and were able to forecast business opportunities. These units used
IT to their advantage and were hence able to tide difficult market conditions.
The smaller ones were not that fortunate.

Textile is one area dominated by SMEs and in areas like
Tirupur, the units operate as clusters. While these units have state-of-the-art
machineries, in terms of adopting IT, most of them have gone slow. In a textile
environment, standalone solutions are difficult to deploy due to the lack of
custom built apps and hence in the past the bigger ones went in for ERP. The
smaller ones, due to the cost factor, have invested in IT only in non-core areas
like payroll, etc, that too in an unstructured manner.

On-demand Model

To improve adoption of IT and bring in operational efficiencies there is a
need for delivering IT as a service to clusters like Tirupur. This is what
project Vikas aims to achieve. This project is the fructification of the efforts
of Microsoft together with Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) and G-Tech
Solutions. Its a kind of tri-polar entity, wherein the TEA acts as an awareness
body, G-Tech acts as the enabler and Microsoft brings in the solution expertise.

This will be done on a hosted model for textile SMEs in
Tirupur and will offer a bouquet of solutions cutting across online desktop by
Airtel, email by Global Outlook, and unified communications by Wipro. Since its
an on-demand, pay-as-you-grow model, the hosted model will go a long way in
bringing in the right set of solutions meeting the unique requirements of the
cluster. This also makes for the units within the cluster to access the
applications at an economical cost.

Reflecting on this unique initiative A Shaktivel,
president, Tirupur Exporters Association says, "We have been working closely
with the government, industry, and solution partners to help the textile
exporters and manufacturers in Tirupur grow their businesses through technology
adoption. The introduction of these new hosted online solutions will accelerate
the IT adoption for the textile manufacturers in Tirupur and give them the
advantage of deploying the right solutions to enhance their business
productivity at an affordable price."

This initiative shows the potential that exists for IT
companies in SMEs. But the key thing here is that generic box solutions will not
work. One needs to offer highly customized options at a cost that works for SMEs.
What Microsoft has done is that it has unbundled the complexities of in-premise
IT deployments. Says Ravi Venkatesan, chairman, Microsoft India, "We believe
that relevant technology, at an affordable price, can go a long way in
alleviating the challenges. We are glad to partner with the leaders in the IT
industry to bring these relevant and cost-effective online solutions which would
go a long way in helping the manufacturers of Tirupur to implement IT and
compete with the rest of the world."

Project Vikas was started in 2008 by Microsoft in the
Tirupur cluster which has now become a realistic technology platform for the
textile units in Tirupur.

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in