Success Story – Salesforce, Inc.

Challenge

The Salesforce tax team managed provisions in-house while outsourcing compliance to a third party. This lack of integration between the two interconnected processes led to a maze of inefficiencies and duplicative work. Reconciliation efforts increased significantly when processing return-to-provision adjustments. For example, the team built book-tax difference workpapers without fully accounting for the end-to-end provision and compliance processes, even though they relied on the same source data.

As US Tax Director Debbie Wong said, “We felt by outsourcing compliance, we lost the opportunity to align and optimize these two interdependent processes.” Additionally, reliance on third parties drove up costs, complicated audits, and “outsourced” knowledge Salesforce leadership felt should remain within the tax team and company.

Further, fragmented processes prevented a holistic view of tax operations, complicating effective planning and review.

Solution

Salesforce decided to reimagine the compliance function. They developed an in-house compliance team, identified process improvement opportunities with clear metrics, and leveraged the functionalities of the CSC Corptax^® Compliance suite to address the challenge. They aligned on a multi-year plan with well-defined benchmarks and collaborated with external advisors to launch the project.

To reduce workpapers and manual data entry, the team designed a detailed tax data blueprint, mapping general ledger accounts to the appropriate Corptax M codes and automating all possible adjustments within Corptax. Next, they used CSC Corptax^® Office and Office POVs to automate dataflow between Excel and Corptax to streamline data collection and validation.

This laid the groundwork to integrate Alteryx to manage intercompany transactions and more effectively aggregate data. And with data now in Corptax, Salesforce used Tableau to create dashboards that revealed real-time, actionable insights for management.

They also fully documented the new process to enable fast on-boarding when new members joined the organization.

Results

The Salesforce effort to reimagine the compliance function and integrate provision and compliance processes resulted in huge benefits. By owning the tax continuum, the team now has a complete view of tax return data in Corptax. They know they have a single source of truth which supports strategic planning, forecasting, compliance, and risk management — adding meaningful value to the organization.

The benefits of managing compliance in-house spoke loud and clear when the team met a management challenge to file returns a full month earlier than the year before — inconceivable with their old process. By driving manual and duplicative tasks out of the process, they completed their 2023 filing not four, but six weeks earlier than the prior year — giving the state team ample time to accomplish their work and even adjust templates for the coming year.

Eliminating reliance on external contractors and consultants and using Corptax in-house fuels major efficiency and oversight throughout the department. Fully involving internal tax teams expands their knowledge and keeps critical company information within the organization.

Improved work-life balance rounds out Salesforce’s success. As Debbie Wong shares, “we can actually take time off and rejuvenate ourselves for next year.”

In short, the Salesforce tax team has achieved impressive results:

• Increased employees’ satisfaction

• Accelerated federal and state income tax filings

• Lowered cost of external providers

• Built an integrated process to support provision and compliance

• Improved data management to enable analytics such as year-over-year variances going back five years and future AI capabilities

• Enhanced processes and documentation to support financial and tax audits