The SMBs in India (companies with up to 999 employees) are set to spend Rs 20,745.54 crore ($4.49 billion) on ICT in the next three months, according to a release by AMI Partners.

AMI notes a significant increase in investments for new customer acquisition among verticals such as transportation, construction, healthcare and FIRE (financial services, insurance, real estate). In the retail sector, over one fifth of SMBs in India mentioned data management as another key focus area for technology adoption.

"With resource-limitations due to recent economic conditions, it has become even more important to see where the pain areas of these verticals lie," says Rati Ghose, Senior Manager—Market Insights at AMI-Partners, Bangalore. "A detailed understanding of verticals is critical in order to target the appropriate products and services since technology adoption will be driven by business imperatives. Business needs vary according to business type, compliance regulation, eco-system players, backward and forward linkages, etc. The task at hand is to understand—if they were to spend, what would they most likely spend on?"

For instance, the FIRE sector today accounts for about 6 per cent of the SMB-universe in India and close to 10 per cent of IT/telecom spending. Other than the large enterprises that have always been at the helm of technology adoption, Indian SMBs in this segment are continuously coming up with innovative product portfolios and intend to move to the next wave of IT adoption. The key drivers for this segment is to offer value-added services to their clients, gain a competitive edge and have excellent connectivity and access to information. Security is another thrust area for them, according to AMI Partners.

"Within this vertical i.e. FIRE, there is a high need for communication and information flow with the eco-system players, who are corporate clients, regulatory bodies, stock exchanges, sub-agents, principals, government authorities and individual customers who may or may not be finance savvy," notes Ghose. "A further deep dive reveals the importance of increasing client base through marketing tools, enhanced customer experience and well researched, reliable & timely market inputs etc. This vertical in India would greatly benefit in a managed hosted service focused towards multi-level security and data management allowing them to focus on their core business."

The retail sector is another upcoming vertical comprising a major proportion of the India SB universe and about one fourth of IT/telecom spending. In the SMB space, inventory management can still be a bottleneck. There is a strong need to have greater visibility of sales and stock levels across branches.

"Other areas of interest would be line of business software to improve daily operations, increase efficiency and reduce dependence on manual intervention. By and large, while targeting the retail vertical, the value of automation in more processes—which will help focus on core business activities and increase customer base—needs to be highlighted," says Ghose.

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