Exclusive Interview: Joyce Ray, India Business Head, Tally Solutions

In an exclusive interview with DQ Channels, Joyce Ray, India Business Head, Tally Solutions shared deep insights on how Tally and AWS work together to empower SMEs to manage businesses and how partner training and programs have enabled Tally to offer useful customer solutions.

With increasing digitization, how important are digital and cloud solutions for SMEs?

Digitization, across business operations, assists in improving efficiency and performance by reducing human error while optimizing cost. Cloud adoption on the other hand enables on-demand access to applications / stored data and gives an opportunity to break the limitations of a physical office. Although the last three years have fast-tracked technology adoption for many SMEs, yet, looking at the opportunities ahead, digitization and cloud adoption is still at a very nascent stage with tremendous scope for improvement. The mid-sized segment does seem to have benefitted from the adoption, in terms of any time anywhere access and multi-location operations management. However, in the SME segment where initially people thought of the cloud as a way to reduce the cost of scaling, this has proven to be a false thesis, therefore the benefits of the cloud need greater innovation around the SME. This innovation needs to be in terms of the tremendous convenience via experience vis a vis their current means of operations that would ensure they do not go back to their old ways of operations. Therefore, in essence, solving for affordability along with seamless online/offline access (uninterrupted connectivity), data security, and an overall significantly improved experience is the way to drive mass adoption.

Last year you partnered with AWS. What was the need and what benefits have you witnessed?

At Tally, we believe in the power of simplicity and have always focused on offering our customers reliable and secure ways of managing and accessing their business data. The collaboration with AWS was an extension of this core philosophy with an intent to provide our customers high quality and affordable solutions that meet their needs for centralized access to Tally for a distributed operation. This collaboration brings synergies with the scale that both Tally and AWS have and offer another simple, secure, and affordable solution to customers looking for high-quality and cost-effective technology options. It not only improves efficiency but also removes the complexity of managing multiple standalone solutions and license requirements from multiple vendor offerings.   

How does Tally Solutions and AWS work together to empower SMEs to manage businesses?

Through this collaboration, we are working together to provide SMEs with a viable option to manage their distributed work environment centrally, where customers can scale and pay as they go. Today, customers can work on any network and system of their choice. Security is built into every component of the solution, and it works on all Windows, Linux and Mac-based systems when accessed through a browser. We are also continuously taking feedback from customers and introducing new features to provide a consistent and seamless experience.

What kind of support, partner training and programs from AWS have enabled you to offer useful customer solutions?

AWS has enabled Tally with a team of expert Solution Architects who helped co-build a robust technical solution which will work at scale to serve several hundreds of thousands of SMBs. The solution had to be cost-effective while delivering a reliable solution which made it technically challenging. AWS Partners from the AWS Partner Network helped build and validate this solution. And we at Tally have been running an extensive training program through our partner network to assist our existing customers to get the benefits.

What will be the future of cloud computing and what are the constraints that MSMEs or SMEs face making the shift to cloud computing?

Cloud adoption is increasingly becoming an integral part of the customer experience. The need to work in distributed environments and on the move is increasing which is further going to accelerate this penetration. However, we feel there is a lot of scope for improvement and several opportunities are open to being explored. Understanding and thereby innovating to solve what will drive mass adoption of the Cloud by the SME sector is the real challenge. Today, customers need to compromise on control over privacy and security when they move to the cloud, and many are not willing to do so. While anytime anywhere access is a big win the cost associated with it and the issues of uninterrupted connectivity could stall the adoption. Therefore, addressing the existing constraints to deliver a much superior experience is what is required by the tech providers to help scale globally. With TallyPrime on AWS, we have addressed this to an extent, yet there is a long way to go in removing these bottlenecks.