SL holds immense potential to be IT hub

With a high level of IT education and digital awareness, Sri Lanka can most certainly be an IT hub, a top IT professional said.

“Sri Lanka has the potential to be an IT hub, according to the government strategy,” Thorsten Leppek the Director Asia Region at Acumatica, a leading US-based company specialising in cloud-based ERP software solutions, in Sri Lanka recently told the Business Times lauding the local IT personnel.

Census and Statistics Department (CSD) data showed that Sri Lanka's digital literacy rate grew at a moderate pace to 57.2 per cent last year (2021) compared to 56.2 per cent by the end of the first half (1H) of 2021, from 50.1 per cent registered as at end 2020.

Mr. Leppek added that Sri Lankan IIT staff is much sought after the world over.

In the country for the past three years, Acumatica has plans to shift to a new office in Colombo. A principal manufacturer of ERP, The difference between Acumatica against other players is that this company never sells their solutions directly. “We always work with local partners. This is because we believe that the local partners know the ground situation best.”

Mr. Leppek pointed out that the reason to come to Sri Lanka was, that the sister company

IFS was in the country. “IFS already had infrastructure. This was an obvious reason to come to Sri Lanka. It was a good logical step as we had the local friend.”

He said in Sri Lanka, their main focus is to build global support through their R&D department. “Last year was difficult, but now we can see sales bouncing back.”

Sri Lanka does not have one dominant player in the ERP space, he said, noting that Acumatica has an advantage as it is 100 per cent cloud-based. Being the new kid on the block, Acumatica aims to see and do things differently, he added.

He noted that the pandemic had speeded the adoption of digital technologies by several years—and that many of these changes could be here for the long haul. “There is a 40 per cent global annual growth of sales since the pandemic in the company.”

Analysts also allude to the growth in general sales, saying that the ‘hockey stick’ approach (sudden and extremely rapid) growth of e-commerce is quickly gaining the attention of industry workers as a new business opportunity. “The companies have accelerated the digitisation of their customer and supply-chain interactions and of their internal operations by several years along with the share of digital or digitally enabled products in their portfolios also enhancing by a considerable time,” Mr. Leppek added.