“We co-existed with Tally Software”- Nityananda Rao- AcTouch

AcTouch has launched their products in 2014 to provide a holistic approach by assuring true value to the ERP requirements of SME’s. In an interaction with DQ Channels, Nityananda Rao,CEO, AcTouch Technology shared the insights on solution offering, GTM strategies and Future plans for Indian Market.

What is your Go-To-Market strategy?

AcTouch Technologies provides a cloud ERP solution that’s delivered through SaaS model to SMEs. AcTouch solution is 100% cloud based with an online registration and usage of application. This helps business owners to manage the business from anywhere and no need to depend on many people.

We tried to analyse our target customer segment where our Product–Market fits and arrived at few customer personas and see what makes them interested to buy our solutions. For this to happen, we did many research, met customers and stood in their counters to see how Sales happens. Post that, we arrived at a set of rules, behavior patterns and decision-making process to arrive at a sample Customer persona who could be interested to use our Cloud ERP.

We started our sales with “Feet on the Street” model and later moved to Out Bound calls and digital marketing model with SEO etc. We had a fair amount of success in this model, but these are not scalable unless we have an army of sales people.

Today we focus more on the Digital Marketing with SEO and Content marketing that generates inbound leads. We also do out bound calls and visit customers with existing customer references.

How your solutions help your end customers?

From beginning, we were clear that, we have to win our Customers with good services and focus to address his problems. This pivoted our focus on the following and we built customer TRUST.

1. Solution in Progress (SIP) – These features list are same like many of the existing ERPs like handling of Invoicing, Billing, Payments, Receipts and Financials etc. However, we focussed on the end users usability and how to simplify the process by studying end users behaviours.
2. Identified problems – These are the problems that are known in the existing products, but no one spending efforts or money to change it. We focused on this segment to win few customers and that helped us to gain more customers.

The solution that we offer is for Business Owners and his team. This means, we focus on process like Sales, Purchase, Manufacturing, Payment and Receipts, Post sales Warranty with Financial integration and GST Taxes etc. We built interface to Amazon Seller central to reconcile the stocks and our MobileApps for Dealers and Distributor, Sale Force etc.

Product has been designed with configurable components that helps based on each Business owners needs. If a customer wants a simple invoice or if he wants to have a complex workflow with a decision-making process then he can enable those features and start using the application without anyone’s help.

What are the recent developments at the company?

There are many development happens in our ERP product based on our customer needs or market trends. It could be an enhancement and simplification of manufacturing process or need to design Theory of constraints (TOC) or additional development in our MobileApps etc. We developed Mobile Apps for SMEs with a feature to connect their Dealer and Distributors. We launched our FREE GST Software for SMEs and this helps many SMEs to streamline their process and controls.

Which are the verticals going more? Which regions are you targeting now?

ERP Software is a RED OCEAN business and there are 1000’s of vendors who sell ERPs of all varieties. We built ERP features like Sales, Quotes, Billing, Inventory, Payments and Receipts, Manufacturing module with Planning, Work Order, Bill of materials, Subcontracting, Finance, Interface to marketplaces like Amazon, eBay etc with all Financial & MIS reports. Most of these are developed with Customers as subject matter experts as we believed in their feedback and simplify the process.

Our focused approach helped us to gain manufacturing customers in OEM Suppliers, large Machine manufacturers, Switch Gears and PVC Pipe manufacturers, Injection Moulding Companies etc. Mainly we focused on Discrete manufacturing segment and we achieved a lot with few key logo wins here.

Today we have from small manufacturing (less than Rs 20 laks turnover) to large manufacturing customers (up to Rs 200 Crore turnover) mainly from Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune, Punjab, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan etc. Along with these current regions, we started focusing more on Delhi, West Bengal. Tamilnadu, UP and Bihar etc.

Which companies do you consider as your competition in the Indian market?

Based on our market research, we believe, only 35% of Indian SMEs have an access to computer. Tally Software could able to reach more than 5 Million Customers. This means till now not one software company could able to take over the SME market with more than 15% market share in India.

We started our business competed against Tally Software, Busy and other customised software. Today 80% of our customer base came from Tally Software users. Even though AcTouch.com is 100% GST and other tax compliant solution, we couldn’t replace Tally and other software because CA and Auditors still preferred it for their work to complete.

We co-existed with Tally Software. We built an interface to Tally software such that invoice and bills that are generated in AcTouch.com could be easily migrated to Tally for the CA and Auditor to complete their process and compliance activities.

Today we compete against SAP B1, Ramco systems, Oracle ERPs and other customised ERPs on Price factors, Simplified complex features and Zero maintenance costs. Being an easy to use application, we score better on end user training and application adaptability.

What are the company's future plans?

We see the future of business in Indian SME segment and that’s huge. We have an opportunity to become a USD 100 Million companies in next 7 years. We have already tested few models to reach out to SMEs and found a reasonable success. We are working towards a better approach to handle GST Compliances, Accounting Services and bank interfaces and reach out to maximum SMEs.