If we talk about the passing year, GST remains the major talk point among all business communities. Government’s decision to change the business tax module could not have been realized, if key vendors have not worked hard to develop updated software solution for all business entity in India. Tally, the market leader in India shown their commitment again and brought up all required resources to help business in India for this historical change. Tejas Goenka, Executive Director – Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd., interacted recently with DT and talked on all aspects of their business growth and upcoming channel plans.
DT: What have been the crucial milestones of your company during year 2017?
Mr. Tejas: 2017 has been an eventful year with the company hitting several milestones. For me, the most important milestone would be that we were able to ensure that almost all of our 1.2 million customers were GST ready within the first month. Given the size and spread of the customer base, this was not an easy task. We did not anticipate a major rush in the first month and despite initial challenges and hurdles, we were able to serve almost everybody well in time. Extensive Pan-India initiatives were taken to inform our customer base of the changes, effects of these changes on businesses and how they can transition smoothly with the new law. Our efforts have been dedicated to all those we were unable to serve and ask them to reach us through help.tallysolutions.com or our toll free number at 1800-200-8859.
DT: What were the major challenges for your company?
Mr. Tejas: The major challenge in the current environment is to ensure that all our customers are up to date with the changes in the law. We have already come out with 7 releases in the last few months, each release corresponding with the return filing date, and updated within 24 to 48 hours of the changes being announced. We are walking the GST journey with the customers and this commitment will continue from our end till the economy adjusts to the new law.
DT: How do you support Government of India's 'Make-in-India' program?
Mr. Tejas: We are a company that has been conceptualised and made in India. The basic premise since our inception is that we are committed to empower businesses in India and provide them with solutions to support their growth. We strongly believe in the ‘Make-in-India’ program, which is a good step in the right direction.
DT: How GST changed your business affair in year 2017?
Mr. Tejas: The implementation of GST in the economy has definitely helped the business grow. While we prepared for this with some serious investment, the preparations weren’t enough for the first month. Some important changes that we made were to size up our service infrastructure between our partners and our direct support, and to increase the responsiveness of our product team to ensure all important changes are responded to quickly. This has helped us significantly in the last few months, and we continue to invest in these areas to bring better solutions to our customers.
DT: What's your channel strength currently in India? How do you plan to boost channel strength in year 2018?
Mr. Tejas: We have more than 28,000 partners in India today which include two prominent groups of partners - Certified Partners, and Associate Partners. Our focus with the Certified Partner group is to ensure that we strengthen our existing partners via sales training, increase in sales and service capacity, and extended reach. Our focus with the Associate Partners is to help expand their product portfolio with high value addition products like ours so that their businesses can grow even more.
DT: How do you assure your customer excellent service support?
Mr. Tejas: We continuously focus on simplifying our software for our customers with the intent to make it support free, however there are times when customers do require assistance. We have a strong focus on after sales support which we continue to improve every day. We are able to reach all corners of India through our extensive network of Certified Partners, and are able to ensure high quality telephonic, email and chat support through our TallyCare call centre. We have also recently invested in a dedicated help website, help.tallysolutions.com, where customers can easily find and solve their own issues.
DT: What will be your key Go-To-Market Strategy for year 2018?
Mr. Tejas: We will continue to invest our focus on enabling every business in India to easily comply with GST in 2018, and will soon be entering the retail POS market as well.
