Tax Manager tackling urgencies

In-house tax teams are always hard at work. Despite the notion of “busy season”, there is no real “low season”. There is always a new tax audit that pops-up. A new M&A deal or a strategic project. A legislative change that shakes up the organization. An urgent tax question from a board member. An annoying question from the statutory auditor. And the list of firefighting goes on and on and on…

There is however hope. A significant part of the work of the tax team is predictable. Think about quarterly tax reporting, or overall tax compliance activities. Doubling down on process excellence, together with investing in supporting tools like workflow engines, will unlock tremendous value. This is about the automation of the distribution of work among the different internal and external stakeholders, deadline and task management, real-time process transparency and a solid audit trail. The icing on the cake here would be the automated, structured and intelligent capturing of the related data and documents.

Furthermore, there are the jobs that are less predictable, but where solid processes can take off the pressure. Think about e.g. controversy management, or dealing with urgent business questions. If all stakeholders involved understand and respect (!) the process in case of a new event, there is at least less chaos. Yes, it may still be painful and stressful to deal with these cases, but the team can rest assured that the job will get done. Without too much harm done…

The more teams invest in process excellence and supporting tools, the higher the degree of automation of the everyday. This results in better levels of preparedness for any type of upcoming change, or truly black swan events. It will result as well in more time to do the “actual work”. And let’s be honest: it is the completion of the “actual work” that provides job satisfaction. Not the firefighting preventing us to do the “actual work”...