Disjointed tax systems and inconsistent processes hinder tax compliance and collaboration in many tax services firms. Orion addressed this by developing a unified tax platform that centralized data, automated processes, and enhanced collaboration, significantly boosting efficiency and accuracy.
Challenge
Our client served major global enterprises with their tax needs. Unfortunately, the client had independent solutions for various taxation models, there was no uniformity in approaches, processes were not optimized, and tax compliance processes were not centralized, hindering the pace at which they could provide complex analysis and the insights that their own clients needed. There was also little collaboration between offices, knowledge sharing and distribution, and visibility into the availability of specialized knowledge and skill-sets in their workforce.
Solution
Orion worked with our client to develop a centralized tax platform which was a single source of truth for all tax engagements across different business models. The platform provided data collection and streamlining capabilities, combined with an intelligent workflow to process and calculate the tax liabilities including support of knowledge base and tax technical assistant validating the calculation and reporting process.
The platform provided the following benefits:
- Data gathering and storage; pulling data directly from client systems irrespective of source being structured/unstructured
- Data transformation through automated validation, mapping and tie-outs
- Guided workflow for the tax practitioner to follow
- Robust knowledge base including best practice and validation prompts
- Flagging of interdependencies and deficiencies in the data/validations
- Real time view of progress, lag and automated flow of data across teams
- Review and sign off module enabling negation of human errors while keeping human verification importance
- Analytics engine to derive knowledge out of the engagements
Impact
Reimagining the client’s tax processes into a single unified tax platform transformed the tax function for the client. It gave them a full digital experience, substantially improving the user experience and ease of access/use of the system and information for higher quality tax work. It also provided a consistent and accurate taxation approach across different business models and work streams, and a commercial edge for the go-to-market (GTM) strategy of the firm’s tax services.
Industries
Professional Services
Services
Data & Analytics
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Industries
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Your questions,
answered.
A unified tax platform is a centralized system that manages tax data, workflows, calculations, reviews, and reporting in one place. It helps tax teams reduce fragmented processes and create a consistent approach across business models and locations.
Tax firms need centralized systems to improve compliance, collaboration, accuracy, and visibility. When tax processes are spread across separate tools, teams may face delays, inconsistent calculations, duplicated work, and limited knowledge sharing.
Tax process automation works by collecting data, validating inputs, mapping information, calculating tax liabilities, and guiding practitioners through workflows. It reduces manual effort while keeping important review and approval steps in place.
Automating tax compliance improves accuracy, consistency, speed, and visibility across engagements. It helps tax teams detect data issues earlier, reduce manual errors, and manage complex tax work more efficiently across multiple clients or business units.
A single source of truth is important because tax teams need consistent and reliable data for calculations, reporting, and compliance. It reduces confusion, improves collaboration, and helps teams work from the same validated information.
A firm should modernize its tax platform when tax processes are fragmented, manual, inconsistent, or difficult to scale. It is especially useful when teams need faster reporting, stronger compliance controls, and better collaboration across offices.
Workflow automation supports tax practitioners by guiding them through tasks, validations, reviews, and approvals. It helps standardize processes, reduce missed steps, and improve visibility into progress across tax engagements.
Analytics helps tax teams identify trends, improve decision-making, and extract insights from completed engagements. In a centralized platform, analytics can support better planning, quality control, and process improvement across tax services.
