We will partner SMEs in their digitisation journey

Bengaluru-based business management software provider, Tally Solutions, has launched Tally Prime in its bid to provide a superior user experience to its customers. The leader in accounting software in India, especially among SMEs (small and medium enterprises), Tally plans to come up with many new versions under Tally Prime, going forward. In a conversation with Bizz Buzz, Joyce Ray, Head (India Business), Tally Solutions, said that the company feels the need for digitisation among SMEs remains huge amid the Covid pandemic and it will partner its customers in this digitisation journey

How is the user experience going to change with the launch of Tally Prime 1.1?

In Tally Prime, we have introduced various features for a better user experience. One thing I want to highlight is that Tally Prime is a series of products, which we are planning to launch in the next six to nine months. After a long time, we have a release on the non-compliant front. In the last years, we had many releases on the compliance side because of the GST implementation. In the new release, we have focussed on many aspects. These are on the navigation front, user-friendliness front, and many more.

The most significant change is on the look and feel side like in colours. The new release also has 'GoTo' capability feature, which simplifies data entry, and is flexible for several business use cases. We have spent a lot of time taking feedback from our customers, chartered accountants (CAs), and others for introducing such features. In Tally Prime 1.1,

we have introduced functionalities as per the requirements of e-invoicing that the government has made mandatory effective from 1.1.2021. Under this, we have also taken care of the safety and security of the data as we are aware that the company data is going to interact with the government portal. Also, the e-invoicing can be traced and tracked over the entire lifecycle of the invoice. This is another significant feature that has been added in the new release.

During the pandemic, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been severely impacted. How have Tally's customers performed during the pandemic period?

As the pandemic started, everyone was working from home. Everything was going digital. So, we introduced a 30-days free trial of Tally solutions in April. We had thousands of downloads due to this. This enabled no disruption in the operations of our customers.

We also made some important changes in our licensing policy under which Tally solutions were allowed to be accessed from remote locations. This became easy for adoption and gave our customers the ability to work from remote locations. We also had upgrades. One of the most important things done during this pandemic was we made all our 35 partners digitised. This helps us to reach our customers virtually.

Were there requests for price concessions or deferment of payment from customers during this period?

No, there were no such issues with us. But, we offered EMI offers to our customers. For a brief period, the number of EMI vendors went up. Eventually, it has come back to normal.

Tally has always been the market leader among SMEs. But, what about large enterprises? How is Tally's presence among CA community?

Many of our new features have been introduced after active consultations with chartered accountants (CAs). If you go to any CA office today in India, you are likely to see various versions of Tally Solutions. We collaborate closely with ICAI (Institute of Chartered Accountants of India) and all the local chapters. CAs remain major stakeholders in our company and we are grateful for their support.

As far as large enterprises are concerned, I want to tell you that as a product, we are not built for large enterprises. Our focus from the beginning is on the SME segment. We don't know about the plans for the large enterprises going forward, but our priority is on SMEs. Our product philosophy, design and user-friendliness is oriented towards SMEs.

Though India is one of the biggest markets for Tally Solutions, the company has also ventured abroad. Will the share of the international business rise in the future?

India is of course our key market as it is an Indian company. Of course, we have ventured out of India and hope to gain more traction going forward.

How technology has been leveraged over the years to make your product more user-friendly?

Technology plays a critical role in all our product planning and design. Over the years, we have introduced many features. These are like customers can generate their customised reports, keep track of inventory, and many more such dashboards. Also, from January 1, we have given access to our customers to see those reports on their browsers.

These will help the management in quick decision-making. We know that there are technologies that are being used to generate even a larger set of reports and dashboards. But, we will like to ensure that our basic principle of data privacy is not violated. Also, most importantly speed is not compromised. We will not like to digress from these principles.

What are your views on the private Cloud in terms of data privacy requirements? Are you comfortable with such an arrangement?

We are following that model even now. Many of our customers have their data saved in the private Cloud. We don't have any solutions around the public Cloud as we have concerns over the data privacy and speed of the operations.

What are the key learnings from the Covid pandemic? What is next for Tally Solutions?

The learning from the pandemic is that the scope for digitisation is very large. This is in terms of both depth and breadth. Our key learning is that we have to keep delivering to our customers with data privacy, speed being preserved. The utmost experience is that we have to continue to listen to our customers all the time and improve.