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Enterprise biz to give 10% of Samsung revenues

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Harmeet
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In 2013, Samsung's enterprise business will contribute 10% of its revenues in India (overall Southwest Asia). Considering Samsung overall will close 2013 at somewhere over Rs 40,000 crore, a back of the envelope calculation indicates an enterprise business worth Rs 4,000 crore. While this does sound impressive, even more lofty aim is to have this enterprise business contribute 23% of the global revenues by 2020. With the new focus on ‘consumerization of enterprise solutions', Samsung hopes, would be the catalyst to achieve these targets.

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Sharing these numbers at the sidelines of the Samsung Southwest Asia Forum 2013 in Hyderabad, Uday Bhat, director-IT, Samsung India also informed of the internal structure realignment undertaken to emphasize more on the enterprise business. While previously each of Samsung's divisions (consumer electronics, mobility, IT) used to have their own enterprise business (even billing was attributed to the particular division), a separate enterprise business division has now been created under the aegis of the Samsung Technology Enterprise Program (STEP).

"STEP is a comprehensive partner program that empowers partners with competitive, differentiating tools to drive mutual growth and profitability in the market. The program focuses on ensuring that partners are certified and prepared to both sell and service Samsung's enterprise solutions," added Bhat.

"Earlier the existing businesses would do enterprise sales, but not anymore. We have formed a separate division and will focus on many verticals for the first time to become a significant player in this space," he emphasized. Some of these enterprise solutions customized across industry verticals focusing on product segments like medical imaging and laboratory equipment, education, retail, transport and hospitality were demonstrated at the Samsung Forum. No doubt, Samsung would now with these enterprise solutions compete against the likes of GE, Philips and Siemens.

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These included a retail solution where brick-and-mortar stores can provide consumers an enhanced buying experience through large-format screens, interactive kiosks and changing rooms through tablets that allow mix, match and track these selections for future purchase. Currently developed for apparel and jewelry retail outlets, Samsung has been in talks with the likes of Croma, Lifestyle and PP Jewellers though no commercial deployment is yet to happen in India.

Samsung is also yet to commercially deploy its m-EMR healthcare solution though talks have taken place with the likes of Manipal and Fortis Hospitals. The m-EMR solution allows patient records to be shared with doctors on a smart tablet thereby reducing administrative paperwork and prescription errors. Hi-res touchscreen displays improving bedside visits, showing X-rays and allowing doctors to start treatment even before hospitalization has already been deployed in South Korea. A HIPPA compliant version of m-EMR is likely to come up by June this year.

Samsung Smart School solution-consisting of ‘Screen Sharing' that allows teachers with tablets (or other devices) to display online content interactively on their students' devices and ‘Student Information Management' ensuring secure usage of content and monitoring student progress-is aimed at the education vertical. An MoU has already been signed with the Ministry of Education in UAE whereby Smart School solution has been deployed in 11 schools and 26 classroom there six months back. Even in India, this solution was deployed in Jain Public School in Bengaluru a couple of months back.

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For the hospitality sector, Samsung has developed an integrated guest room automation solution whereby a guest can access door cameras, open and close door locks, store channel history, manage the ACs and lights too. This solution is having takers in the home sector too with entry level deployments costing Rs 1-1.5 lakh. Samsung has already seen deployments in Delhi and Indore for the guest room solution.

Last but not the least Samsung also unveiled a mobile enterprise solution called Samsung Knox that will provide security for both work and play. For enterprises, this will provide comprehensive security an protects confidentiality of enterprise data in handsets which are used by employees.

(The author was in Hyderabad at Samsung's invitation)

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