CxO of the Week: Mr Vikash K Agarwal, CTO, Tally Solutions

CxO of the Week: Vikash K Agarwal, Chief Technology Officer, Tally Solutions

Vikash Agarwal is the Chief Technology Officer at Tally Solutions and is a contributing architect of Tally’s award-winning business management application. His ability to provide technology solutions with the simplicity of usage and powerful performance has contributed directly to the product’s popularity among businesses today. With a highly focused mind, Vikash plays a critical role between the business and technology fabric of the organization. He has 20+ years of IT experience and specializes in system design and development on a wide variety of languages and platforms. Passionate for high-quality mass-market products, he has been delivering high-tech products as an entrepreneur, right from his college days. Vikash is a graduate of commerce and has contributed to multiple technology journals around the world. Here is Mr Vikash Agarwal as CxO of the Week at CiOL.

How did Tally Solutions adapt to the pandemic, what were some challenges you faced? What were the challenges for the industry you operate in?

Being a product company laying huge emphasis on close collaboration, we did not have extensive work from home. With the pandemic insight, our teams rose to the challenge to set up a robust infrastructure to enable everyone to work smoothly from home. In fact, TallyCare, our customer support centre, moved to a 100% decentralized system overnight and with zero downtime. To assist our customers and SMEs at large, we provided a 30-day free license of Tally to all SMEs across the globe.

For our existing customers, we extended the Tally Software Service (TSS) for a month to not burden them financially. Additionally, we revamped our licensing policy to bring Tally Virtual User (TVU) which enabled virtual access of the product and the same was given for free for a period of 4 months to existing and new customers.

To assist our partners financially, we set-up a COVID fund that allowed them to take care of employee salary, EMIs or any other fixed expense. With the continued support of our teams, we have achieved positive results over the last ten months, and launched our biggest product, TallyPrime - the next generation business management software, amidst the pandemic.

IT infra for employees was not the biggest challenge for us but ensuring that our networks and data remain secure with remote working needed expertise and effort. We have also been facilitating regular sessions with experts on various subjects for our employees to cope up with the situation and forced isolation. We even went ahead and conducted our mega annual event and award ceremony aligning it to the online mode with everybody participating as well enjoying from their homes.

What role did Tally play in supporting MSME’s and entrepreneurs to survive and strive in these times?

We have been working in the MSME space for over three decades and engaging with MSMEs has primarily been through physical meetings by both our partners and teams. There was a need to change our way of engagement which was met with initial apprehensions by customers and teams alike. However, our teams relentlessly worked with partners to train and upskill them on virtual collaborative tools so that their communication is effective in the absence of face-to-face meetings. We also initiated a ‘Digital First Entrepreneur’ program for our partners to equip them digitally, to assist customers and reach out to businesses who wanted to switch to using software and technology during these times.

This continuity of engagement with our partners and customers during the pandemic period played a crucial role in providing emotional support and strengthened the trust within the entire ecosystem. This was much appreciated by our MSME customers along with the fact that we provided extensions for their annual subscriptions and licenses.

TallyPrime was launched timely, amidst the pandemic, it helped the MSME owners and new-age entrepreneurs with an ultra-simple and powerful solution, to build productivity and efficiency. The solution has been designed in a manner where first-time technology users can manage and grow their business at ease, without knowing the finer nuances of accounting or technology.

We have also been conducting regular webinars to educate customers of new ways of working, resolve their queries on the product and set-up remote access through Tally. The MSME sector has faced many difficulties but they continue to remain optimistic about the future.

How can small businesses overcome the challenges faced while adopting technology into their business?

For MSME business owners, the decision to digitise and automate is not an easy journey. The transition from a traditional business approach to digital solutions, entrepreneurs are faced with challenges like changing their way of working to adapt to the software, resistance towards learning new technology etc. The business owners are also concerned about the loss of data as well as the security of the data. However, we assure business owners and help them understand the need to adopt the right type of technology. Some of the key considerations that they must be aware of while adopting technology solutions include:

• The software must be flexible enough to adapt to the business’ way of working
• Solutions must be simple to learn and use
• The right assistance and service should be provided when needed
• Reliability concerning reports and upkeep of data
• Business data is private and secure and in complete control of the business owner

What do you think is the future of Business Management Software (BMS) or ERP, in general, in India?

Businesses are increasingly evaluating their IT setup, to ensure that they are supported by technology to continue operations amidst all situations while having security and privacy of their business data. At Tally, we constantly work to visualize the future of business operations and envision the change in the next 5-10 years. Connectivity and mobility have been a fundamental shift in the ecosystem since the past few years. Integrate-ability across applications has become more and more widespread. All this makes it possible to reimagine how business systems will work. Hence, our new product design is focused around letting businesses take the full advantage of staying ‘always connected’.

Business Management Software (BMS) can effectively help businesses across segments to automate their operations, resulting in seamless collaboration and streamlining of processes, while minimising errors of manual data work. Besides, due to remote and mobile working capabilities adopted by most businesses, a simple BMS software can ensure security and privacy of financial data which is of utmost importance.

We are working on products with capabilities that will allow users to operate on a diversity of devices, anywhere anytime with access to their data in real-time. Interestingly, we are building the tech to ensure that the operations continue even if they are offline. We are focusing on building advanced solutions that will enable systems across businesses to simply interact with each other and allow the natural flow of transactions increasing the overall speed of a business while reducing cost and errors.

Overall, our software will be connected to banks, e-commerce businesses, government systems, customers, and supplier systems all without needing any technical expertise at anyone’s end and simply allowing work to happen.

One month into 2021, we have seen some major cyber-attacks. How is Tally ensuring the safety of its consumer data?

The current environment that we operate in holds security and privacy of consumer data at the very core as businesses continue to automate and operate, remotely. While there is a large number of businesses that rely on software solutions and services, the owners are still unaware of growing cybersecurity threats that come with this digital transition. This leads to high-risk, especially while managing financial data, which is a critical asset of any business.

Tally’s principle of privacy design provides customers with complete control over their data. The architecture of Tally’s current offering is premise-based, allowing control of business data with the customer – who sees and operates it. There is also an option to encrypt the data on the device so that only authorized people can see it.

We envision to offer products that will allow businesses to collaborate and connect anytime, anywhere, allow online data exchange with other businesses and integration with third-party services seamlessly. To ensure that we can guarantee a 100% privacy and security of data, we are building our own cloud-based technology. Customers can maintain and encrypt data on their devices ensuring that only authorised personnel have access. Similarly, data transfers between the customer’s device and Tally backend systems are encrypted through security protocols that ensure protection against various kinds of attacks. The same is the case for data passing through Tally’s backend systems to third parties. An additional layer of encryption is present ensuring that it is deciphered at the recipient endpoint only. We either don’t store that data on the backend or if it is stored it cannot be opened by us.

What are Tally's Data Security goals?

Our core value and focus at Tally is to ensure that we offer solutions that are simple and provide complete data privacy and security to our customers. To leverage the power of the cloud, we are working towards technology where a business can access his data anytime and anywhere, but the custody of the data always remains only with them. This means that not even Tally can access any business data. In a connected business network, while data flows seamlessly between organizations, we want to ensure that apart from the two consenting parties between whom data flows, no one else has access to it.

Tally is a homegrown brand. Will “Vocal for Local” its impact the future of the MSME sector and the company?

“Vocal for Local” is a strong step to empower the MSME sector in India. This campaign has become a catalyst for the adoption of native technology, enabling MSMEs to leverage digitisation for business sustenance and growth. This holistic India-centric approach combined with key financial support can further push the MSME sector to become a powerhouse, propelling the country towards self-reliance.

In addition to being a homegrown brand of business application, we have developed the underlying technology stack with our own database technology, an application development platform and a language called Tally Definition Language (TDL). This platform has helped us create a unique experience while offering simplicity, flexibility, and reliability. This platform coupled with our deep understanding of MSME has given us the ability to build products that suits the requirements of these businesses across sectors and segments. It even enables our partners to modify the product as relevant.

We believe the understanding of the market, the customer requirements, and the resolve to innovate solutions to serve the segment better plays a key role in the growth of the company. The campaign certainly provides a positive push.

Has the Union Budget faired your expectation?

We all expect or desire for the economy to get back on track soon. The overall sentiment around the budget seems to be positive with the slew of measures announced to promote growth and development and enhance demand and consumption. The announcements must be backed by good execution on the ground.

What is the future of the MSME post-pandemic?

We regularly speak to our customers to understand their feedback towards our product offering and also on the business. We noticed during the pandemic that, while many business owners were uncertain about the future, many of them are showing positive signs of recovery now. They have overhauled their ways of working, adapted to the digital means of operating business and are now better prepared for what the future holds.

Today, we are seeing more entrepreneurs being optimistic despite the uncertainty in the future, which has redefined our views for 2021. Businesses across sectors are gradually bouncing back to pre-COVID levels and more expected to revive soon. They have started reinstating the teams, which is improving employment opportunities. This remarkable resilience assures a brighter future for the MSMEs.

What technology trends will transform the MSME industry in 2021?

2020 witnessed a major paradigm shift in the traditional way of working for businesses across in India as well as the world. We have seen the appetite and capacity for digital solutions with sudden demand from businesses to ensure continuity during the lockdown. Investments in communication tools and basic infrastructure were the initial focus for businesses. However, we foresee businesses investing increasingly in technology during 2021 including accounting and inventory management systems, capabilities to operate 24/7 through e-commerce followed by collaborative tools to coordinate. We also expect that businesses will focus on:

• Remote working tools for conferencing and collaboration to be increasingly adopted, for efficient remote working
• Access to business data anywhere anytime will be crucial for hybrid working. Many businesses are used to keeping their data on-premise, therefore, IT applications and deployment strategies must address data security and privacy concerns, especially when extending access to data for remote working
• Increase in the usage of mobile devices for work purposes, applications need to work seamlessly across a broad array of devices to support the same
• Businesses will need to prioritise digitising processes that will allow them better control over operations and to manoeuvre through uncertain futures.