Advertising executives, public relations experts, and other communications professionals use that phrase to emphasize that our sensory impressions and gut feels often carry more weight than the underlying facts of a situation or event. How people perceive a political candidate can matter more than the politician’s stated policy positions or legislative record. How consumers view their favorite brands matters more than balance sheets and price-to-earnings ratios. A similar dynamic holds true for enterprise resource planning (ERP) cloud migrations.
Finance and accounting, information technology (IT), and tax professionals often view cloud migrations as a necessary endeavor to be completed by a set date. This widespread perception obscures the underlying reality that cloud migrations offer valuable upside opportunities.
Leading companies leverage ERP cloud migrations (e.g., moving from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA) to strengthen data management capabilities, streamline processes, and bolster organizational efficiency and resilience. In addition, they do so to enhance their ERP ecosystem by implementing or upgrading related solutions (e.g., Vertex’s cloud-based tax engine) and leveraging advanced application program interfaces (APIs).
There are many reasons to include advanced tax automaton in an ERP cloud migration—including 10 benefits described later in this paper. This is fortunate because sales, use, and value added tax compliance happen to be realms in which perceptions match reality. Tax compliance is viewed as a challenging, ever-changing, and absolutely necessary requirement—and daily business realities confirm that perception.
This makes the inclusion of a new or upgraded tax engine in ERP cloud migrations imperative for finance, IT, and tax groups to consider. The optimal way to work through this consideration is by:
• Recognizing the challenging and fluid nature of indirect tax compliance
• Understanding the differences between native ERP tax compliance functionality and the power and economies of scale of pairing SAP with Vertex
• Assessing the full range of benefits derived from integrating the Vertex tax engine with SAP S/4HANA
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