‘We don’t see tech spending necessarily going down’

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: Think of Microsoft and PC software like Windows and Office suites come to mind. Microsoft’s offerings for the manufacturing industry—one of the top two verticals that the world’s largest software maker focuses on—largely go unnoticed. Indian manufacturing industry seems to be hot on Microsoft general manager, manufacturing and resources industry unit, Charles Johnson’s priority list. While US companies wrestle with the economy, Indian companies with an average growth of 9 % in the last four years, seem to be stronger. In a candid chat with Pragati Verma, Charles details pressures on manufacturing companies and tech enablers that could help them out. Excerpts:

Analysts at IDC and Gartner have recently lowered IT spend predictions for 2009. Have you seen priorities change at manufacturing firms?

Yes. Manufacturers have relied a lot on historical sales and forecasts. In these economic times, you have no visibility of what your businesses will look like and whether the forecast is actually based on real numbers. So the number one priority of our customers is better insight across each line of business. So for CEOs, corporate performance management is the number one priority. In many companies earlier, they used to just produce, produce and produce and manage inventory later. Now they are thinking—what you need to produce to ensure employee productivity. This is becoming the key priority for customers in India too.

Next on their agenda is accelerating innovation, especially around new hybrid technologies and energy technologies. It could be a new drugs facility, or better energy fuel, or more hybrid cars, or designing something that’s better than iPods and Zunes, or even phones. Earlier, it used to take three years from design to actual production. They now want to take 18 months. Also, they are looking at improving operational efficiencies. They need just in time inventory to be able to have just in time manufacturing. As Indian manufacturers expand to global markets, they need to have optimal production facilities.

Managing your supply chain, right from procurement to the end customer, continues to be important. What we find is that customers have their SAP, but are not sure if they should expose their order management information to the rest of their enterprise. But how do employees or suppliers make a guess on the supply when you actually don’t have access to SAP? That’s what collaboration technology enables.