Prinya Krachangmol, Sipa's software industry development manager, said the idea is to promote local software products among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with verification and certification from Sipa.

Sipa will establish an inspection committee to check software companies and products for certification. The committee will consist of experts from the government sector, universities and the industry sector.

The agency will start with five software categories - manufacturing, wholesale and retail, logistics, tourism and healthcare.

The project is likely to include the selection of outstanding software to be certified to Sipa standards in order to increase the degree of confidence for their SME target customers.

"The scheme has been initiated because SMEs' confidence and acceptance of local software products is not strong. This project aims to build confidence in local software in the minds of local SMEs," said Prinya.

Once the committee is established, software companies will be allowed to join the STEP project by submitting their products to the committee. T

hen there  will be an inspection process including testing the company itself, the company's highlight products, and the company's software developers.

If the company passes all criteria, they will be certified by Sipa and receive Sipa's certification mark which can be used in the companies' marketing activities.

"The certification mark will include the 'Sipa Link' logo that indicates the company is supported by Sipa. Now we are establishing the testing process and areas of criteria," said Prinya.

Companies will be supported in the form of funding by Sipa in order to do further research and development as well as marketing their software products.

Prinya said the aim is to have at least 10 companies who develop transaction-based software, and another 50 companies in non-transaction-based software, across the five software categories, certified within this year. The STEP project is expected to be running next month.

This is the most recent step by Sipa to promote local software for local SMEs. A previous project initiated and supported by Sipa in the last three years is SME Software Exchange (SMEse).

The SMEse scheme aims to encourage software producers to meet users though a virtual marketplace at www.smese.net. So far around 400 software products across 10 main categories have been active at the virtual marketplace.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation