Tally Release 5.4 Comes With Enhanced Compliance & Performance Experience

Tally Solutions, the premier Indian software product company, announced the rollout of Release 5.4, the latest version of the Release 5 series from its Tally. ERP 9 suites, in the national Capital Territory of Delhi and five states – Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu. While this is the maiden launch of Series 5 in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh; Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu stand to benefit from the enhanced performance experience the 5.4 version has to offer.

With the constitutional amendment for GST now passed, the entire country is gearing up for the biggest indirect tax regime. Through GST, the government intends to bring about greater transparency in business transactions and simplify compliance needs. Tally. ERP 9 Release 5.4 aims to help businesses ensure that their transactions are correct and complete through the powerful concept of triangulation and with it Tally Solutions will help prepare businesses across the country for the GST regime.

The Tally. ERP 9 Release 5 series is designed to empower businesses to be fully tax compliant, ensuring that tax returns reflect the books of accounts accurately. This helps businesses with simpler, easier and quicker compliance.

The VAT capabilities in Release 5 are being launched in an incremental manner across India. In line with its preceding versions, Release 5.4 is also aimed at supporting businesses with a comprehensive compliance solution for the geographies mentioned above, and provides the latest VAT capabilities.  In this regard, Release 5.4 includes all the features present in the releases before it. Additionally, users of Release 5 Series, also stand to benefit from the performance enhancement features incorporated in central taxation capabilities (Excise, Service Tax and TDS) that is applicable across the country.

Since its release in July 2015, Release 5 series has already been made available in 18 Indian states and union territories. With the introduction of the latest version 5.4 in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, the product currently provides comprehensive compliance support to 20 States across the country.

Tally.ERP 9 Release 5 Fact Sheet

With Tally ERP.9 Release 5, Tally Solutions has taken a major leap in terms of innovation and reinforced its commitment to customers and partners to deliver greater value.  Some of the key highlights of the release include:

·         Tally. ERP 9 Release 5 supports users to remain compliant towards VAT, Service Tax , Excise , TDS and TCS, in the most simplest and efficient manner

·         Tally. ERP 9 Release 5’s on-demand synchronisation capabilities will help organizations to conveniently exchange business information independently and reliably, across multiple branch locations.

·         Release 5 comes with a seamless product upgrade facility, which allows users to easily upgrade to the current version from all previous versions.

·         Users will get personalised product updates relevant to their geography and usage. This greatly reduces the update size and thus enhances the update experience.

·         The new version will occupy significantly less memory space, thus optimizing system performance.

Tally.ERP 9 Release 5 also provides separate tools for partners to create layout customisation within minutes, thus saving time and enhancing the user experience. Partners can migrate their customisations developed on earlier releases of Tally.ERP 9 seamlessly in a short time, to the latest version, ensuring that the time and money invested in the past remains meaningful.

Oracle & Telangana Academy Tie Up for Computer Education to 2,000 students and 150 Faculty Members BY 2019

Building on Oracle’s commitment to expanding its support of education in India announced earlier this year, Oracle Academy and Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) have signed a partnership agreement to introduce Oracle Academy curriculum into 150 engineering colleges in Telangana. As part of this initiative, Oracle Academy resources including software, academic curriculum, hosted technology, educator training, support and certification resources will be made available to students and faculty.  The initiative is expected to help 2,000 students and 150 faculty members over the next three years.

Under this agreement, Oracle Academy will facilitate a 'train-the-trainer' course to ramp up engineering college faculty members as instructors for five Oracle Academy courses including Database Foundations, Database Design and Programming with SQL, Programming with PL/SQL, Java Foundations, Java Fundamentals, and Java Programming. After completing their training with Oracle Academy, the faculty members will leverage the Oracle Academy infrastructure and materials to train other faculty members and students.

Commenting on the collaboration, TASK CEO Sujiv Naid said, “In today’s digital world, demand for employees with IT skills is sky-rocketing, while there’s not enough supply. To be career ready, today’s students need computer science classes as part of their educational pathways. We are delighted to announce our partnership with Oracle. Our goal is to prepare our students on emerging technologies and enhance their employability quotient.  Oracle Academy offers a wide range of classroom courses, self-study materials, workshops and other resources including certification discounts which will help our students equip themselves to meet the increasing demands of the IT industry.”

Each year, Oracle Academy reaches more than 3.1 million students in 110 countries.

“We are excited to team with Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK),” said Shailender Kumar, Managing Director, Oracle India. “Oracle Academy enables educators everywhere to inspire and prepare millions of students to become the innovators and leaders of the future. Today’s collaboration showcases how the technology sector can work together with state government initiatives like TASK to provide a practical solution to the skills gap challenge.”

Zippo & William Penn Partner to Strengthen Footprint Across India

Iconic lifestyle brand Zippo is excited to announce its partnership with William Penn Pvt Ltd (WPPL), the largest multi-brand retail store chain of premium and luxury men’s accessories in India. As exclusive distributor, WPPL will ensure Zippo’s widespread availability of products at retailers throughout India, which will include new and iconic Zippo Windproof Lighter designs.

“We are extremely excited to have the opportunity to distribute Zippo lighters across India, as well as sell them in all our own stores.” said Nikhil Ranjan, Co-Founder and Managing Director of WPPL, “The addition of an iconic brand like Zippo to the existing quality brands we distribute will enable us to work even closer and further strengthen our relationship with Indian retailers. We are always looking for ways to improve our performance and reach new customer bases, so I am confident that our association with Zippo will prove to be fruitful and one of immense success”.

Zippo products are available in more than 160 countries, with India being a prominent focus for the brand. Customers in India will be able to choose from an extensive range of lighters offering the very latest designs and finishes.

WPPL plans to further develop the distribution base for Zippo products in India working with a variety of different retailers to ensure the brand has strong visibility in the key towns and cities across the country. Zippo products will also be available in the 28 William Penn stores and 3 shop-in-shop operations in 10 cities.

“A multi-faceted nation like India is one of the most-sought after markets for global consumer brands like Zippo,” said David Warfel, Vice President Global Marketing. “WPPL have a proven track-record of distributing quality brands to other retailers. We believe they can have further success with Zippo products. The brand personality resonates with our own and we’re enthusiastic about reaching new and existing customers by offering them a fantastic range of products and designs.” 

WPPL will be present at this year’s GIFTS INDIA exhibition from August 19^-22 at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai, with a wide selection of Zippo products on display at their booth (1P & 2P on the Ground Floor) allowing potential retailers to explore the range and discuss the potential to stock Zippo products. 

Mphasis Sparks Accelerates Digital Transformation to Indian Organisations

Mphasis, a leading IT services and solutions provider, today launched ‘Digital Acceleration Program – Sparks’. Sparks accelerates digital transformation for organizations without them having to invest in future proof technology or research labs by constantly bringing in industry disruptors revolutionizing the global banking and insurance sectors. These partnerships are a catalyst in verticalyzing cutting-edge digital technology to help Mphasis’ customers pragmatically deliver end-to-end solutions.

Sparks currently introduces two vital elements ‘Customer Experience’ and ‘Data, Information and Intelligence’ aspects of digital. Sparks evolution roadmap consists of bringing in three other elements: Commerce, Operations, and Architecture and Technology Transformation.

Sparks concurrently fast tracks market reach and growth of leading FinTech and Insure Tech companies; by leveraging a combination of Mphasis’ strong vertical focus, technical proficiency and transformative digital leadership threading domain & digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Big Data & Advanced Predictive Analytics. 

Sparks initially focuses on hyper-personalization, micro and omni-channel engagements, bringing in AI and NLP technology to transform experience through partners - Ushur, Loyakk and Artificial Solutions Inc.

“Sparks is a potent combination for ensuring digital competitive advantage, innovative technical expertise and future proof business solutions. Collaboration in a mutually beneficial ecosystem offers interoperability, protection of investment and confidence in the future for both our customers and partners as we jointly walk down the path of relevance. Our stringent evaluation methodology ensures we enroll only the best ‘Silicon Valley’ like FinTech and Insure Tech focused start-ups into Sparks,” said Dinesh Venugopal, Head of Strategic and Digital Customers, Mphasis.

Sparks partners will help customers improve application performance, deliver impactful customer experiences and drive business outcomes. All partners—including digital agencies, independent software vendors, cloud platform providers, and specialized systems integrators —working wih Mphasis can now grow their business reach and jointly serve leading banks, brokerage and insurance companies with vertically relevant digital offerings.

Simha Sadasiva, Chief Executive Officer, Ushur, which provides highly innovative micro-engagement, self-service platforms on mobile phones, said, “Mphasis Sparks is a very thoughtful initiative that leverages its deep domain expertise and access to a large market and offers a unique opportunity to companies like us to deliver disruptive solutions to Banking and Insurance industries. We believe business analysts in enterprises can leverage our service bots to drive down significant costs in new and existing customer engagement”.

“We provide Unifier-X, a next-generation Mobile Engagement Platform that enables enterprises to deliver high-touch, personalized experiences to its high-value customers. The credibility of Mphasis driving innovation via its Spark 1.0 program creates incremental revenue growth, access to larger customers and formalizes our joint efforts in support of customer loyalty in critical markets. We are excited to bring innovation in personalized experiences,” said Salim Ali, Chief Executive Officer, Loyakk.

“We are delighted to be part of Mphasis Spark. Customer expectations are changing fast - they now expect to be able to speak to automated channels in a humanlike, natural way – and get accurate, meaningful replies 24/7.  Our natural language platform delivers an artificially intelligent, conversational component that complements the other technologies that Mphasis are integrating into a compelling customer experience proposition for the banking and insurance sector,” said Lawrence Flynn, Chief Executive Officer,

Mining Companies Licenses Eka’s CTRM Software & Commodity Analytics Platform

Eka Software Solutions, the leading global provider of Smart Commodity Management software solutions, announced today that one of the world’s largest metals and mining companies has selected Eka’s CTRM software and commodity analytics solution to integrate with Eka’s execution platform for a seamless production planning process.

The company sought a software solution that would integrate disparate systems and replace a largely manual process to provide an accurate production plan at optimum time intervals. Eka’s solution differs from typical systems in that it is highly integrated to the execution layer providing the scheduling staff with up to the minute feedback on current plan tracking and plant availability. The new software has a variety of inputs including maintenance plans, stock levels, current performance, rail schedules, and ship arrival forecasts and loading sequences. Outputs include detailed task schedules for execution that are dynamically updated in real time.

Eka’s Commodity Analytics solution uses the plan and delivery metrics to provide process performance results that include efficiency and diagnostics as well as scenario based learning. The integrated suite will ensure that optimal execution plans are applied to maximize the plants current capability.

The metals and mining giant was already using Eka’s software for executing production plans and have been impressed with the state-of-the-art 3D stockpile control and material tracking capabilities, which delivered significant throughput improvements. By integrating Eka’s systems for planning and scheduling, the company gains context rich analytics information that will enable it to make the best decisions in operations and maximize throughput.

The company has licensed InSight CM - Site Automation Control and Commodity Analytics Cloud solutions. Site Automation Control provides real-time visibility into operations, productivity, equipment usage, inventory, and maintenance and delay accounting. With Site Automation Control, companies have a clear view of stock on hand and future movements. Commodity Analytics Cloud is an advanced analytics solution that provides apps to measure and diagnose the performance of a plan and to optimize stockyard processes. By identifying deviations from the plan and areas where performance can be improved, operators can make timely corrective actions.

“The integrated site automation control and commodity analytics solution recognizes that production efficiencies are impacted by the scheduling process as much as operational capabilities.” said Peter Stanley, Eka’s Director of supply chain solutions. “Instead of manually gathering disparate data when anomalies occur, the production team will now have the supporting analytics to make continuous improvements to production plans.”

Universal Robots Standardizes Shop Floor Processes for Bajaj Auto Ltd

Esben H. Østergaard, founder and CTO of Universal Robots, and Vikas Sawhney, GM, Engineering, from Bajaj Auto Ltd. showcased the proficiency of a co-bot through an interactive session to demonstrate how collaborative robots are increasing the efficiency of processes on Bajaj’s shopfloors. Since 2010, Bajaj Auto Ltd. has more than 100 Co-bots helping them drive their position as the world’s 3rd largest motorcycle manufacturer. They are the first company in India to implement the use of collaborative robots in automotive assembly lines in India.

On this occasion Vikas Sawhney, Bajaj General Manager Engineering (Robotics and Automation) said, “Two-wheeler assembly lines are highly labor-intensive, spatially challenged which have physically taxing movements that require high-end precision. While trying to automate these lines, one of the basic requirements was for standardization. Moreover, we also wanted to be cognizant of the requirements of the large women workforce at Bajaj.”

During this session, Vikas Sawhney and Esben H. Østergaard also showcased a short video on how the UR co-bots revolutionized the Bajaj shopfloor by streamlining and automating the processes of production across units.

Adding to this, Esben H. Østergaard, Founder and CTO of Universal Robots said, “We are very happy to hear about how our co-bots have eased out processes at Bajaj. Our co-bots were chosen because of their compactness, safety and cost effectiveness. This is a sustainable and suitable option for companies like Bajaj whose employees now possess the right tools to carry out repetitive tasks with faultless precision. The collaborative nature of our co-bots will ensure that their employees are beaming with smiles at the end of their day.”

Universal Robots (UR) was launched in India on October 22, 2015 and is the leading manufacturer of advanced user-friendly and light industrial robotic arms from Denmark.

Top 10 Worldwide Mobile Phone Vendors Increased Sales in Q2 of 2016

Global sales of smartphones to end users totaled 344 million units in the second quarter of 2016, a 4.3 percent increase over the same period in 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Overall sales of mobile phones contracted by 0.5 percent with only five vendors from the top 10 showing growth. Among them were four Chinese manufacturers (Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi and BBK Communication Equipment) and South Korea's Samsung.

"Demand for premium smartphones slowed in the second quarter of 2016 as consumers wait for new hardware launches in the second half of the year," said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. In addition, the decline in sales of "feature phones" (down 14 per cent) bolstered the decline in overall sales of mobile phones in the second quarter of 2016.

All mature markets except Japan saw slowing demand for smartphones leading to a decline in sales of 4.9 percent. In contrast, all emerging regions except Latin America saw growth, which led to smartphone sales growing by 9.9 percent.

"The top five smartphone manufacturers together continued to gain market share in the second quarter of 2016 — up from 51.5 percent to 54 percent year on year, led by Oppo, Samsung and Huawei," said Gupta.

In the second quarter of 2016, Samsung had nearly 10 percent more market share than Apple. Samsung saw sales of its Galaxy A and Galaxy J series smartphones compete strongly with Chinese manufacturers. Its new smartphone portfolio also helped Samsung win back share it recently lost in emerging markets.

Apple continued its downward trend with a decline of 7.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016. Apple sales declined in North America (its biggest market) as well as in Western Europe. However, it witnessed its worst sales decline in Greater China and mature Asia/Pacific regions, where sales declined 26 percent. Apple had its best performance in Eurasia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe regions in the second quarter of 2016, where iPhone sales grew more than 95 percent year on year.

 Among the top five smartphone vendors, Oppo exhibited the highest growth in the second quarter of 2016 at 129 percent. This is due to strong sales of its R9 handset in China and overseas. "Features such as an anti-shake camera optimized for selfies, and rapid charge technology, helped Oppo carve a niche market for itself and boost sales in a highly competitive and commoditized smartphone market," said Gupta.

In terms of the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Android regained share over iOS to achieve an 86 percent share (see Table 2) in the second quarter of 2016. Android's performance continued to come from demand for mid- to lower-end smartphones from emerging markets, but also from premium smartphones, which recorded a 6.5 percent increase in the second quarter of 2016.

A number of key Android players, such as Samsung with the Galaxy S7, introduced their new high-end devices, but Chinese brands like Huawei and Oppo are also pushing their premium smartphone ranges with more affordable devices.

"Google is evolving the Android platform fast, which allows Android players to remain at the cutting edge of smartphone technology," said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner. "Facing a highly commoditized smartphone market, Google's focus is to further expand and diversify the Android platform with additional functionalities, like virtual reality, enabling more-intelligent experiences and reach into wearables, connected home devices, in-car entertainment and TV."