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Shoaib Ahmed

Tally Targets Mid- Market In 2010

Interviewed by Sneha Kupekar Mon, Mar 08, 2010

image We are an accounting software company but have the capability to offer a complete business solution. CIOs are interested in collaborating with their ecosystem so enterprises are the way forward for us. image

Shoaib Ahmed President and Member of Leadership Team, Tally

Cloud is on every vendor’s agenda. Does Tally believe that ERP in the cloud would be acceptable to Indian enterprises?

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AHMED: Tally ERP 9 works in a combination of on-premise and cloud model for services, such as the Tally.Net services – a part of our basic core offering. We understand that a customer who wants to buy Tally ERP is ‘on the move’ customer, who needs to access his machine remotely without any additional license. With Tally.Net platform, a client just needs to activate an account through subscription which is built into the ERP offering. Instead of SaaS , Tally believes cloud should be used for services. The software deployment from us continues to be on-premise as most users want to keep their data with themselves. But if a customer requires SaaS, our product is capable of handling it too.

Tally’s feature rich ERP tends to become heavy for SMBs. What is your value proposition with MNC vendors at one end and smaller ISVs at the other side?

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AHMED: Our current share in computerized SMB space is over 90 percent and our main competition is pirated software. Increasing the number of features has only reduced the size of the software with constant upgrade in technology. Today a user wants functionality combined with customization which is possible with Tally ERP. To target the enterprise space, we will introduce Series B and Series C of Tally within end of this year, in addition to existing Series A. The product will be upgraded to meet volume, scalability and customization requirements. We are planning to increase the capabilities of partners through Tally Integrator program.

Do you consider Tally Integrator program is a big opportunity for service providers? What partner initiatives can be expected from Tally in 2010?

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AHMED: Yes. They can learn the Tally development language which will help them better understand the solutions they can offer to customers. Due to the products’ maturity, partners can use Tally technology itself instead of using other technologies to build integrated solutions. We want to limit the program to 40-50 partners initially, but we can hit the three digit figure soon.

How do you equip partners to sell the right solutions across right vertical and consequently ensure partner profitability?

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AHMED: Tally has 13,000 Master Tally Partners, who are the primary sales and support partners. Tally sales partners comprise the large IT community selling vanilla products. A mid-tier i.e Associated Master Tally Partners are an aggregation of Tally Partners (sub-distributor into licensing). Tally Service Partners take care of service requirements without getting into customization or modification. Lastly, Tally has education partners for Tally academies and the revenue from this vertical goes largely to system integrators. Tally works across all verticals as a core offering and most partners build vertical solutions over it. We are an accounting software company but we have capability to offer a complete business solution. CIOs are interested in collaborating with their ecosystem and we believe enterprises are the way forward for us.

Highlight important trends in the ERP space for partners to focus for business growth.

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AHMED: There is an enormous growth potential in mid-market because I think it is under serviced. We have to build the capabilities of this segment as this is a huge opportunity for partners. Tally is definitely betting on mid market for 2010. The biggest issue facing Tally is piracy, as almost one in seven of Tally software’s are pirated.  We are concentrating to highlight Tally’s value addition to a company for customer to evaluate its worth and pay for the software. We are focusing on supporting materials, online customer experience and PoC to help our clients make decisions comfortably.



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