Digital Rids a Music Academy from Manual Pain

Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ) is one of India’s pioneering rock bands that has been together, playing and composing music, for 20 years. Well, you must be wondering as to why Dataquest is talking about them. There is a purpose. TAAQ is one of the examples from India which embarked upon a new path and thought of providing a platform to the musical talent by setting up an academy.

DECODING TAAQADEMY
TAAQ wanted to provide Indian musicians a holistic platform which could become partner in a musician's journey. So TAAQ decided to bring the music talents together and set up TAAQADEMY.

According to their website, TAAQADEMY is a music school that teaches guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and vocals across the widest variety of genres and styles. What they are truly after though is an inspiration. They aim to deliver a creative experience that is addictive, uplifting and just plain great old fun.

CHALLENGES DO COME HANDY
It is easy to think of starting something. But it is difficult to start it. TAAQADEMY started out small. In the beginning, things were smooth. The academy could manually process and crosscheck the applications. But things didn't take long to change. One of the statements from the company reads, “As their numbers grew from 50, 100 to 150, they realized that managing the schedule and administration manually was close to impossible, especially since all their music sessions are on a one-on-one basis.”

After two years of manually handling schedules, Rajeev Rajagopal, one of the founders, and his partners decided it was time to find a solution that can help them to handle the rising flow of applications.

USING AND DEPLOYING THE SOLUTION
TAAQADEMY chose the digital path to bring down its manual activity. It began using Exotel for bulk SMS, call recordings and communications. The academy even customized their call flows. “Exotel services helped us in many ways. We had a great gut feeling about working with Exotel and as musicians sometimes gut feeling is given a lot of priority,” says Rajeev Rajagopal.

TAAQADEMY's entire student communication now happens through the online platform. The communication process is powered via a simple missed call. Students that have a class scheduled get a text message with two numbers in it, one confirming their attendance and other to say they won't be able to make it.

BENEFITS GAINED
The music school is now better informed about the attendance at all times. The new platform bridged the communication gap between the teacher and the student. “Using the new services has been a friendly, fun and flexible experience for us. Our business has grown 3 times, and it would have been impossible to handle this efficiently without the new technology in place,” adds Rajagopal.

He outlines that TAAQADEMY has just scratched the surface with new capabilities. The academy plans to further increase its reach and become all the more digital.

Onkar Sharma
onkars@cybermedia.co.in