Demand for quality software products in the Australian and Asia Pacific SME markets
There is significant demand in the small and medium scale enterprise (SME) sector in the Australian and Asia Pacific markets for quality software products, says Jehan Bastians, Director Marketing for Australian Strategic Partnerships. He made this statement at the rebranding of the company from Strategic Partnership Solutions (SPS) to Australian Strategic Partnerships (ASP) held at the D Pavilion Inn restaurant in Colombo last week. SPS is one of the pioneer companies in Sri Lanka dedicated to providing workflow and management solutions. Over the last 10 years the company has digitised and continues to manage over 300 business processes for Sri Lankan firms including banks, financial services companies, insurance companies and so on. Mr. Bastians said, “Having recently partnered with Austin Group, the company is now looking to take its digital footprint internationally, starting with the Asia Pacific region. The company believes there is significant demand in the SME sector in the Australian and Asia Pacific markets for quality products at a different price point from the traditional market leaders.”
Workflow and document management is a niche market in Sri Lanka and there aren’t many large established companies locally. Globally there are many players such as Kodak, IBM, Humming Bird, Pegasus and so on who are periodically big companies who play in this space, he added. “We do all kinds of business processes and co-function of any business. When a customer requests a quality product, the way you serve the client within the promised timeframe is a challenge we are trying to address. Rebranding and expansion of the company will give the exposure to our business analysts and technical engineers which sometimes open up to a lot of new ideas. There are better ways of doing things here in Sri Lanka after getting the exposure from abroad.” He said: “We are already working with several Australian companies, outsourcing and helping Sri Lankan companies off shore work from Australia to Sri Lanka.
We also have a BPO operation running in our office in Colombo.” Sri Lankan businesses can operate marvelously, if you want and willing to do things differently , he added. Austin Group Partner Manjula Kulathunga who was also present at the event, said, “Labour is the most expensive factor in the Australian market today. All what they do is look at opportunities of minimising the labour intensity in any processes, try and automate the systems like in the banking sector, check-out counters, supermarkets, airlines check-in and so on.” Most of the business entities in Australia give more tools to the end user so that they can customise their product, he added. He also mentioned that as part of the company’s rebranding and expansion strategy ASP has decided to sponsor the 1996 Cricket World Cup Champions on a tour to Australia which will be the first time in 19 years that the former team members will travel together.