When access to PCs not possible, businesses can be run on cellphones

MONTREAL — When Shashank Upadhyay was running one of this father’s glass bracelet factories in India, he wasn’t always near a computer and not all of his employees had them.
He had to get data stored in his computer and then talk to the factory’s production controller about the next day’s work, making things not as efficient as they could be.

With cellphone use widespread in India, Upadhyay said their use in running small and medium-sized businesses could help increase productivity in a country where the use of paper is “really prevalent” and make up for not having access to a computer.
“When you just pull the thing out of your pocket and you’re looking at your inventory and the daily production and supplies, it will speed up the whole thing,” said Upadhyay, who is now based in Montreal and exports glass handicrafts to the United States.
“People don’t want to stay in one place reading their accounts and all of those things. They want to communicate with their business facility and their contacts and their vendors at the same time,” he said.
In North America, running a small business on a cellphone without having to go into the office to use a computer is already possible.
That’s what global business software maker Intuit envisions for fast-growing markets in Southeast Asia, including India, where it plans to target millions of small businesses.
Intuit is the maker of software such as Quick Tax personal tax software and personal finance software Quicken.
The California-based company has announced it will set up a global business division office in Mississauga, Ont., to develop software for 12 southeast Asian countries that it says are experiencing fast growth. Also included are Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea.
A small business owner could be running his operation even when he’s away from his store or warehouse, doing such things as checking customer data or inventory that he can pull up on a cellphone that could cost as little as $20, said Alex Lintner, president of Intuit’s global business division.
“We’re going to teach consumers that they can do some things electronically instead of using a manual method of paper and pencil or using a spreadsheet,” Lintner said in an interview.
“People already take their office with them, but even more so you want to penetrate the masses and democratize technology,” he said in an interview.
PC Magazine analyst Sascha Segan said Intuit will have competitors, noting that Salesforce.com offers small business software for mobiles and Microsoft Corp. and SAP, among others, also have software for cellphones.
Segan said Intuit is trying to transplant its success with its computer software for small business to cellphones.
“What Intuit is trying to do is move that Quickbooks goodwill and that Quickbooks reputation into this world of small business people who are relying more and more on their smartphones,” said Segan, lead analyst for mobile devices with the technology publication.
“They are transitioning over a very popular PC product into a post-PC world.”
Segan said in places where there isn’t infrastructure to reliably run PCs, the mobile phone will be “embraced most enthusiastically as the only computer for their businesses.”
Upadhyay said fabric merchants, grocery stores, clothing and computer stores are examples of small to medium-sized businesses in India. He said the challenge will be to make the software affordable to avoid piracy and to make it available in local languages for widespread use.
Technology analyst Jack Gold said the biggest problem that Intuit will face is adapting the software to local languages and that’s why, overall, there is less software available in those countries, he said.
Gold also added the local networks to run the phones also have to be reliable.
“There are some places where the network is just fabulous and there are some places where the networks are just awful,” said Gold, of J. Gold Associates in Northborough, Mass.
Adoption of mobile phone use in small businesses might take a little longer in India, Upadhyay said.
“Every new concept is treated with a radical eye sometimes. But talking about the short term it will positively affect the production timing.”