June 30, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 25, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 29: Pakistan’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) sector was currently operating at a disadvantage. This was primarily because majority of the manufacturing and planning processes were either un-automated, or, if automated, were not being utilised to their fullest potential.

According to a World Bank study, the SME units in Pakistan employed over 80 per cent of the non-agriculture workforce and yet contributed only 35 per cent to the national GDP.

According to Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) a key reason for this gap was that the SME units were still using manual processes and procedures for managing work flows in their industries.

Another deterrent was the cost of licences for using these products. A lot of the software in the industry right now was proprietary software and the industrial units had to pay licensing cost for using these applications.

In addition, in the absence of source code for the application they were completely dependent on the software companies for any changes/customisation that they needed in the application.

In order to close this gap, Pakistan Software Export Board’s “Automation of Domestic Industry on Open Source Systems” project was engaged in developing complete Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions to automate the processes and procedures for the SMEs in HR and payroll, finance, inventory, production and sales in those sectors of the economy with the highest export potential.

According to PSEB, the ERP solutions were being developed using open source software code. The solutions would be made available to the industry, so that applications could be further enhanced as per the needs of the units.