What Tax Leaders Expect from Technology
With today’s technologies, finance leaders are facing great opportunity and some tough decisions. From cloud-based systems to advanced analytics to RPA, the digital tools available today can overturn how the finance function is run, for better or for worse.
To date, the typical approach has been addressing multiple needs with multiple solutions. But when there exists one solution that can tie everything all together, there’s no point in spreading out onto multiple systems. More on that later.
While different solutions meet different needs, they’re often not integrated. Each system provides a different view into the business. But besides having to move from one tool to another, the lack of a big-picture view can be an issue. For many, getting a big-picture view has required spending considerable amounts of time, money, and effort.
Why is this the case? There’s a frequent disconnect between reporting applications and software that supports managing a company’s attributes. We often see spreadsheets used as bridges between compliance software and elements such as net operating losses. While finance professionals use different technology for specific issues, the process of manually moving data back and forth can result in errors and missed opportunities.
According to Deloitte, tax executives want 4 key things from their technology:
· Transparency. At every stage of their business, they want to be able to see where things stand — the status, who’s working on it, next steps, and so forth. They’re tired of the walls separating teams or processes that have traditionally made that kind of insight hard to find.
· Integration. Tax professionals want an end-to-end digital view globally — a single user experience offering a window into all the different parts of their work. If ERP systems aren’t configured for the tax department’s needs and integrated with its other systems, for example, it can be difficult to find and incorporate the insights they contain. In global organizations, tax leaders are looking for simplicity and a user experience that brings together the information they need to know about their compliance activities as well as the content or knowledge to help them think about compliance data proactively.
· A contextualized and personalized experience. The dashboards in many tax tools are effectively one-size-fits-all, delivering essentially the same information to all users. What tax professionals need, however, is a personalized strategic view, with content customized to the user’s role in the organization, geographic location, practice area, and other factors.
· A more streamlined work flow. There’s a lot of redundancy in many tax processes. AI capabilities such as automation and machine learning are among the tools that can be used to help reduce that, freeing up human professionals to focus on higher-value tasks such as finding new insights.
There’s one technology that meets all four requirements
Companies understand the importance of creating strategies around technologies, but many have yet to make investments in this area. There are many benefits to integrating technologies within the tax function, among them being able to do more with less, driving greater value from data, complying with increasing reporting requirements etc. With technologies such as DataRails, organizations can derive great value from their systems.
DataRails provides a big-picture view of all data and answers all 4 of the criteria set forward by tax professionals and their expectations of their technology.
Transparency- With DataRails, finance executives can see exactly where things stand. The ruler within Excel allows finance professionals to update data in real time, which finance executives can then see in their dashboard.
Integration- DataRails provides tax professionals with a birds-eye view of all their data. The solution consolidates data from all organizational systems, tying together information derived from any CRM, ERP, GL, or spreadsheet.
A contextualized and personalized experience- DataRails’ web-based, real-time dashboards are fully customizable, allowing you to visualize your data as you see fit. DataRails’ Insights feature is perfect for visually conveying your message in a straightforward way.
A more streamlined work flow- Benefit from improved data preparation with automated data transformations including consolidations, FX conversions, eliminations, hierarchies, financial adjustments, and more.
The pace of change is showing no sign of slowing down.
Organizations are looking to technologies to help them keep up with changing times. DataRails is one such system that can help you make sure your technology stack is keeping up with the times. If you want to succeed in this rapidly changing landscape, you’ll need it.
