Customer Experience and Tax Technology

Technology and customer experience are at the center of unprecedented change. Constant innovations and commotions are happening across industries and geographies. Evolution and innovation are pillars for success in this modern age.

  • Evolution signifies advancements in implemented trends to provide a modern, progressive, and better customer experience.
  • Innovation represents the addition of new technology and customer experience trends.

Evolution

The evolution aspect has seen trends in recent times.

Evolution Trend 1: Cloud-based automation

At present, stakeholders of tax technology are keen on making the tax function automated and digitalized. Implementing an automated tax management solution offers several advantages to companies for staying competitive. In addition to saving time and streamlining workflows, automated solutions such as Avatax help pre-empt costly human reconciliation errors, thereby providing a cost-effective way to comply with state tax filing requirements.

Automated solutions increase the accuracy of a company's invoicing and are especially helpful to small and medium-sized businesses. Manual sales tax compliance is unproductive, inefficient, and error-prone. With automated tax solutions, you can:

  • Keep your teams focused on revenue-generating tasks.
  • Choose the products you need to help your business offload time-consuming jobs.
  • Enhance customer experience with rates based on custom rules applied at the point of purchase.
  • Improve accuracy with regularly updated address-specific tax rates.

Evolution Trend 2: Scalability

As your company grows, your sales tax obligations also increase. 

A scalable sales tax solution helps your business overcome immediate issues and ones that may arise in the future. It allows you to add more clients, integrations, and tax components, strengthening its standing as the trusted advisor for all your tax needs.

Evolution Trend 3: Hyper-personalization

A best-in-class solution understands you and your needs as an individual, providing you with a hyper-personalized experience using data, analytics, AI, and automation. Hyper-personalization enables us to send highly personalized communications to specific customers at the right place and time. Implementing advanced data technologies allows for a better understanding of users' preferences and activities, allowing software providers to provide dynamic pricing and offer personalized services after the purchase.

Evolution Trend 4: Artificial Intelligence

Tax compliance rules and policies are constantly changing. Analytics and AI harness the power to make the necessary changes to survive and thrive. AI-backed software will lead business functions and replace some parts, especially those with a high scope for human error and repetitive manual tasks.

Innovation

In the innovation aspect, these key technology and customer experience trends in 2022:

Innovation Trend 1: Digitalisation

Electronic invoicing is not a new technology, but its relevance has recently developed. A growing number of nations are making digital invoicing a mandatory activity. Electronic invoicing mandates are quickly taking root. Here are a few critical benefits of e-invoicing:

  • Faster payment and improved cash flow
  • Real-time tracking of invoices
  • Better Visibility and transparency
  • Better account reconciliation
  • Increased productivity and automation

Innovation Trend 2: Omnichannel Compliance

Seamless and consistent experience, regardless of available features, is the base for omnichannel compliance. You already know that data in different systems can create significant issues if you're omnichannel. Omnichannel support ensures that your solution works with multiple systems across departments so all your teams can access up-to-date information.

Innovation Trend 3: Blockchain

A blockchain is a shared or distributed ledger. A blockchain system records each transaction cryptographically. Each change to the transaction creates another block in a connected and traceable chain, making the transaction nearly impossible to falsify or destroy.

Innovation Trend 4: Intelligent CRM

Intelligent customer relationship management (CRM) is an automated platform and connected products. Here data travels freely using the latest technologies (like AI, machine learning, blockchain, and data analytics) in product design and development to ensure a top-notch customer experience.

Innovation Trend 5: Edge computing

Edge computing is a distributed computing model that intends to improve speed and save bandwidth. It takes the data storage and computing process closer to where data is generated, enabling improved data control, reduced costs, faster insights, and timely corrective actions. Edge computing can prove beneficial in processing large amounts of transaction data in an optimized style. For example, a tax platform can limit the data needed in a specific location and accelerate tax determinations by optimizing the processed content. This trend can also help organizations deal with a growing demand for lower latency.

Innovation Trend 6: Interconnectivity

Interconnectivity makes a huge difference in customer experience. Organizations can achieve interconnectivity using integrations with required back-office tools and easy-to-use APIs that are regularly updated and maintained. API is how a machine talks to another device. APIs are useful in real-time compliance. As more and more tax functions become real-time, APIs will become critical.

Conclusion

Keeping up with these existing and new trends is a massive challenge in terms of scale, reliability, and complexity, and we do it better than anyone. We are determined to use the evolution and innovation approach to calculate tax accurately and automatically for you at speeds measured in milliseconds. That's why you'll find Avalara all around the world, helping businesses prepare for growth in the global market.

Recent posts
Avalara TaxQuest: Sales tax implications for foreign businesses that use third-party warehouses in the U.S
Malaysia adopts new centralised e-invoicing system
Avalara TaxQuest Question: Do foreign businesses need to collect sales tax at U.S. trade shows?

Prepare your business for e-invoicing under GST

Discover how to meet all compliance requirements while integrating e-invoicing into your tax function.

Prepare your business for e-invoicing under GST

Stay up to date

Sign up for our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest tax news.