E-CRM in SMEs: an exploratory study in Sangammer region of Maharashtra in India

Although there are many definitions of SME's there is no globally accepted definition of a small or medium-sized enterprise. Small Medium Enterprises (SME) the catalyst in economic growth & development of the country, are facing tough competition in market place and in establishing themselves as credible supplier of quality product and services. In India they are producing more than 8000 different products. The common perception is that small to medium businesses have very little options in terms of CRM solutions. This is clearly not the case. SME's now have a lot of options and can exercise same. Businesses are shifting from product centric to customer centric. Long before the advent of technology, businesses have always recognized that the customer is the soul of every business. Businesses try to have personal relationship with their customers. Moving towards customer centric approach is a multi prolonged efforts that requires transformation of process, culture and strategy from top level to every individual employee. Technology has a crucial role in providing tools and infrastructure to support this. CRM supports SMEs in their business customer loyalty.

Maintenance management model for industrial Smes

This paper presents the design and results of the implementation of a model for the evaluation and improvement of maintenance management in industrial SMEs. A thorough review of the state of the art on maintenance management was conducted to determine the model variables; to characterize industrial SMEs, a questionnaire was developed with Likert variables collected in the previous step. Once validated the questionnaire, we applied the same to a group of seventy-five (75) SMEs in the industrial sector, located in Bolivar State, Venezuela. To identify the most relevant variables maintenance management, we used exploratory factor analysis technique applied to the data collected. The score obtained for all the companies evaluated (57% compliance), highlights the weakness of maintenance management in industrial SMEs, particularly in the areas of planning and continuous improvement; most SMEs are evaluated in corrective maintenance stage, and its performance standard only response to the occurrence of faults.