OSCG exhibited at World SME Expo, held in Wan Chai, Hong Kong from 5 to 7 December.
Being a show for “SMEs” rather than for any one industry, the exhibitors ran across every trade there is — Chinese regional specialities and 3D printers through to IT services like ours. From Japan, a dozen or so companies exhibited under the SME Support Japan umbrella, in food, ornaments, surveying services and more. The visitors came from all sorts of industries too, and most, as the show intended, seemed to be owners of small and medium-sized businesses.
A great many people came by OSCG's OpenERP booth; over the three days we must have talked with something like 200 in total. Each was looking for a concrete solution to a business problem, and my impression was that nearly half already knew of OpenERP.
Besides exhibiting, OSCG's head King spoke on the theme “A New Era of ERP” in the session “How Cloud Computing Enhances Your Business Competitiveness”. The 200-seat seminar room was full, with people standing at the back. The cloud theme may have helped draw the crowd, but in the discussion afterwards the questions were about OpenERP rather than the cloud, which said something about how closely the SME sector is watching it.
Compared with ITpro EXPO in Tokyo earlier, both the exhibitors and the visitors came from companies a size or two smaller — and for that very reason, on both sides, those gathering information and those providing it, the seriousness seemed greater than in Tokyo.
On trends: rather than the B2B trades an ERP package has tended to target — manufacturing, and the trading companies close to it — there were more people from companies with momentum in B2C, such as retailers working through online shops and consultancies that need project management. We intend to keep improving our service so that we can offer companies like those something better.
We exhibited at World SME Expo 2013