Me setting up Sharepoint for tax data management

Sharepoint definitely has merits. But very frequently, I hear tax leaders rightly complain about the limitations of their tax Sharepoint 🚧. Let me highlight the most recurring criticism:

1️⃣ Sharepoint is and will be a generic tool. This means it is not tailored to the needs of tax. This comes with a lot of risks and frustrations.

2️⃣ The customization thereof is possible to a certain degree. However, it is complex and typically in-house tax will need to rely on IT or consultants to tweak it to their needs. This is a huge dependency and often a key person risk. And a significant cost driver.

3️⃣ The data in Sharepoint is often not properly structured, which prohibits unlocking the highest degrees of intelligence, and blocks efficient search functions (we have all struggled with finding back stuff in Sharepoint, isn’t it?).

4️⃣ Sharepoint is not made to offer the solid audit trails that in-house tax people require. From a governance and control perspective, it is suboptimal.

5️⃣ Like any built-in-house tool, Sharepoint comes with a maintenance cost—a huge one, which most of the time is massively underestimated. Do the maths.

6️⃣ It is very challenging to set up powerful workflow engines from a Sharepoint environment. These workflow engines are the only way forward for in-house tax teams that want to properly future-proof their tax function.

7️⃣ Naming convention and overall nomenclature are and will be a nightmare. Not to mention document and data versioning.

8️⃣ Sharepoint doesn’t scale well.

9️⃣ It is flat and passive.

Overall, while SharePoint can serve as a functional tax repository for some organizations, careful consideration of its limitations is essential. It is often part of the bigger “buy vs build” comparison. Be open-minded when starting such an exercise. Think about the hidden costs and risks 🚨. Think about the long term. You will almost always end up with a buy decision.

Are you looking to transform your tax data management? Get in touch! We have built a modern plug-and-play solution for tax data management for in-house tax teams that’s easy to implement and simple to use. Book a personalised demo of the Loctax platform to learn more: