Major Developments Major Developments by Calendar Year

The term enterprise automation refers to that where an enterprise implement the usage of new tools and techniques to make the business processes more faster and produce the output with accuracy. Automating the process in an enterprise increases the work efficiency of the workforce and decreases the workload of different activities. Usage of new techniques and tools help employees to do more economic value addition by which more revenue can be generated. Automation helps in customization of various processes where the advance tools with highly integrated set of techniques are used. It can be adopted at various levels to receive the quality output and to bring more credibility. Automation is effective in different aspects like monitoring and managing of job scheduling, IT process, workload minimization, transfer of files, database management, infrastructure provisioning, security/compliance, documentation etc.

Basic Reasons for Automating the Business Process
1. Using advance tools and techniques in business processes is helpful to reduce the operational cost. The less capital or money needed to be invested to start an operational activity in a business and key task can be accomplished in a specified time. This will allow the enterprise to save more time and money. Equally, it allows the higher authorities to make the effective and better decisions for different operational levels. According to the capabilities of the workforce the distribution of the activities can be done among them, where they will be able to improve their performance in a given task.

2. Automated tasks are done with the customized tool and techniques which are measurably less error prone. It means that the chances of happening the error or mistakes becomes less. The task can be done with more accuracy by the workforce. If training is provided to the employees on automation tools and techniques, organizations can yield higher productivity outputs.

3. Automated tasks enable an enterprise reduce cycle times of producing or manufacturing the product. Time can be managed and different market strategies can be developed to focus on business expansion. Understanding the core business activities will become easy and its importance could be visible towards employees. Automation provide focus to such activities that takes longer time for the completion of a process and avail the management to strategies to effectively overcome such problems. And more attention towards the preference of the customer or clients can easily be fulfilled with that the demand of the market for quality products and services would easily be delivered.

Processes and Systems that can be Automated
1. Life cycles
The life cycle of the things that can be fully automated in an enterprise include IT assets like servers, different storage devices, desktops and telecommunication devices, etc. The IT assets may also include upgrading the hardware, installation of customized software, conformation and examination of the condition of an asset life, removing the asset which are in bad working condition, etc.

2. Processes
Automation can be done towards all IT and business operations that can be

• Planning the business processes where the organization appoint the technically skilled employees, who can easily understand the core business activities and deal with the challenges to provide quality output.
• Analyzing and identifying the market opportunities to enhance business opportunities.
• Making the purchasing of the tools and machinery, easy and timely updating of IT assets to facilitate the smooth operation of daily activities
  Scheduling and execution of OS patch windows, which may require many attempts to deal with exception handling

3. Audit and Examination
Automation is very helpful in asset management to get a clear view on software and hardware assets. By streamlining the audit process through automation, organizations can gain true visibility on their IT assets.

CII and Ernst & Young made a report called ‘Enhancing role of SMEs in Indian Defence Industry’ in 2009. It was reported that about 20-25% of components and sub-assemblies were supplied by 6,000 SMEs to Ordnance Factories, Defence Public Sector Undertakings, DRDO and the armed forces. Special policies were laid down by the Government of India which helped in increasing the supply of national and international defence majors. There had been a rise in business opportunities in defense and aerospace sectors.

A cumulative defence budget of USD 26.5 billion was observed in 2009. Joint ventures and technical collaborations were set up by Indian SMEs attracting the attention of foreign OEMs, Tier I and Tier II vendors. 44 percent of the respondents revealed that improvements had to be implemented in defence offset opportunities.

The report advised an improvement of information technology and automotive industries for design, development and manufacture in aerospace and defence sector. It also revealed the importance and need of domain knowledge development. Certain guidelines were given regarding licensing procedure and other complementary activities for the SMEs.

It was estimated that there were 2.61 crore MSMEs in 2006-07 according to the reports of 4th All India Census of MSMEs (2006-07). This was the first report that was made after the change of definition of the MSMEs. According to the Census, an enterprise is defined as a unit with fixed premises and hawkers, road side vendors were not included.

The Census reported that there were 0.15 crore registered units and 2.46 crore un-registered units. Among the small business firms 28% constitute for the manufacturing sector and 72% constitute for service sector. It was reported that the small business units constituting Apparel include 14.03% of the firms, Food Products and Beverages include 13.53% of them and Maintenance of Personal and Household goods include 9.25% of them.

The Census reported there were about 7.3 million manufacturing enterprises and 18.8 million service enterprises of the total 26.1 million enterprises in 2006-07 in the MSME sector. The number of women enterprises with 2.1 million constitute for 8%. There were 14.2 million rural enterprises constituting 54.4%. It was reported that per unit fixed investment was Rs. 38.78 lakh and per unit gross output was Rs. 46.13 lakh.

Employment was provided for 5.97 persons by the MSME sector including 0.95 crore from registered units and 5.03 crore from un-registered units. The per unit employment was also found to increase from 4.48 in 2001-02 to 6.24 in 2006-07. There was a decrease in the closure of MSMEs from 39% in 2001-02 to 21.64% in 2006-07. It was also revealed that there had been an increase in per unit fixed investment to Rs.33.78 lakh from Rs.6.68 lakh, and per unit gross output from Rs.14.78 lakh to Rs.46.13 lakh.