Successful delegation to Korea, Japan
Government agencies have begun a drive to encourage small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) throughout Thailand to adopt information technology to improve their businesses processes, lift productivity and expand their trade both locally and overseas.
The campaign lends simultaneous support to the local software industry, with trade missions seeking overseas business and local opportunities to develop software as a service to SMEs.
The Office of Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion (Osmep) aims to create a new business ecosystem for SMEs this year that will boost their capacity to support the government's Thai Khemkhaeng project. At the same time, it is promoting the local IT industry in domestic and international markets.
The director of Osmep's SME Promotional Scheme Development Department, Wachira Kaewkor, said the state agency had created a strategy for helping SMEs to enter international markets. It was called SME Capacity Building: Win for International Markets.
Moreover, Osmep has joined Software Park Thailand in promoting local IT and software companies in Korea and Japan over the past few months, and an IT-industry business delegation to those countries has found outsourcing orders and business matches with which to expand.
"I think the cooperative effort that took local IT and software companies to Korea and Japan was very successful for business, because the companies have been able to create potential opportunities in these markets through business matching and finding business partners and outsourcing work," Wachira said.
Software Park Thailand's director Suwipa Wanasathop confirmed the success of the business development delegation to Korea and Japan. The 16 Thai IT and software companies and three universities that joined the delegation have been able to negotiate partnerships among themselves as well as finding international business partners. They have been able to make 58 business matches, creating potential revenue of about Bt29.6 million and adding value during negotiation of about Bt64 million.
Jirapas Daomanop, marketing manager of Jasumedia, one of the companies taking part in the delegation to Korea and Japan, said support from government agencies had been very useful to local software and IT companies in looking for business partners and business matches in international markets. The company is negotiating with international business partners to distribute its software in Korea, Japan, China and Vietnam. It expects to conclude a global distribution deal before the end of this year.
The director of the Industry Ministry's Industrial Promotion Department, Vatee Phiravaranuphong, said his department was working through the existing Enhancing SMEs Competitiveness through IT (ECIT) project to create business opportunities and raise the productivity of SMEs. The project emphasizes the use of IT to improve performance, develop new products and services and create opportunities.
"The ECIT project will encourage SMEs to use local software and information technology to manage their business processes through Web-based applications accessed via the Internet at affordable costs," Vatee said.
The department is also developing an e-marketplace so that SMEs are able to market their products via an online channel at www.thaitechno.net. It expected that 1,000 SMEs will be selling their products via this website before the end of this year.
Meanwhile, the department is urging local software companies to develop enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to support SMEs by offering software as a service or cloud-computing applications so that SMEs will be able to access management and business-process software over the Internet and pay for these services according to demand. The department is also offering to help pay for SMEs using software and IT services to support and manage their business processes.
Vatee said there were now nine software companies in Thailand developing ERP software to support SMEs. Last year, more than 90 per cent of SMEs were using IT to manage their business processes and reduce costs. The department believes that the three-year ECIT project will lead 400 SMEs to use IT and software services via cloud computing and individual software packages, encouraging them to use local software and boost the software industry as a whole, he said.
Osmep said recently that Thailand had 2.85 million SMEs, up from 2.79 million last year. They were expected to generate revenue of Bt6.41 trillion in 2010, a 3.29-per-cent increase over Bt6.21 trillion in 2009.
