An overview of Tally Incorporated’s strategy

One question that haunts everyone who knows the ERP market well is how to survive and more importantly grow in this highly competitive field among global heavyweights including SAP and Oracle. This question is specifically directed at Tally, one of the few original software developers in India. It has been over 6 years since Tally launched its Tally ERP 9 ‘A’ series and at that specific time the presentations made by company officials about the product dealt only with financial data. At the time, it seemed like Tally couldn’t think beyond accounting or her solution, even though it was labeled an ERP. Many believed that it was just a repackaged accounting solution that contained some new features. Even the president of Tally Solutions recognized that it is traditionally accounting software and that this way of thinking needed a drastic change.

There are several small and large players in the Indian ERP market. In a place where there are giants like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, etc. in others there are providers such as Infor, Sage, QAD, Ramco, etc. Of these, Oracle and SAP are undoubtedly the market leaders, so the main question here is how Tally intends to compete in this space. To date, Tally’s focus has been on the small office and home office (SOHO) segment. Therefore, it is not surprising that of the 260,000 companies that use Tally ERP, the majority fall into the SOHO category, while the rest are large companies. Explaining this, the president of Tally Solutions is of the opinion that small businesses are their typical customers and don’t require fancy features in their ERP. Clients mainly require to automate financial data and this is what Tally provides them.

Although Tally has been quite successful in penetrating the SOHO space, it requires changing its strategy when planning to tap into large companies. Explaining the change in strategy, the president of Tally Solutions said that his approach to ERP is to identify the key problem areas for each category of customers (small, medium and large) and create solutions that emphasize that specific problem. He further added that the company has discussed SaaS internally, but at the end of the day they need to see if through SaaS they are solving customer requirements or their own delivery problem. In addition, he explained that they already solved the customer’s problem a long time ago by making Tally lightweight and easy to install. Since its inception, Tally has made a huge leap into the ERP space and has met with commendable success. Its latest offering Tally ERP 9 has created wonders for the companies all over the world by giving them real value for their money with value additions, various modules, excellent after-sales service, etc. Currently, the company has external partners that develop applications for business intelligence, analytics, etc. for your ERP solution. Therefore, the ecosystem needs to be further nurtured so that Tally customers can get full Tally support and access to more useful apps.