Indirect tax trends and insights from Oracle CloudWorld

Attendees at the most recent Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas were showered with news of innovations, tech trends, and insights. Avalara was mentioned as part of the growing Oracle B2B network in the Oracle Fusion Applications keynote by Steve Miranda, EVP of Oracle Applications Development.

Here are a few highlights from Avalara:

Last summer, we announced being embedded in Oracle Cloud ERP — an expansion of our collaboration with Oracle to create a fast, easy, accurate, and automated turnkey tax compliance experience in Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). With Avalara embedded in Oracle Cloud ERP, manual indirect tax setup, configuration, calculations, and complexities from every transaction are removed — saving businesses valuable time and lowering their overall risk of calculating taxes incorrectly or filing the wrong returns.

“Working closely with Avalara will enable us to remove unnecessary friction and inefficiencies in tax compliance by automating tax processes for our joint customers,” said Rondy Ng, EVP of Applications Development at Oracle. “With Oracle Cloud ERP, organizations can embrace automation and continuous innovation to increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve controls.”

Integrated compliance services: With Oracle Cloud ERP, customers can integrate core parts of the Avalara offering within hours, reducing implementation time by weeks. Fully automated tax compliance management leverages up-to-date tax content for more than 900,000 tax rules across more than 30,000 tax jurisdictions to maximize accuracy of tax calculations. In addition, a single dashboard enables simple and efficient tax return preparation and filing.

“We live in a cloud ecosystem and all those 14,000 customers are on the exact same cloud, [leveraging] the exact same connection to all of the partners [Avalara], for full end-to-end automation,” said Miranda,

In a session with Alex Baulf, VP of Global Indirect Tax and E-Invoicing at Avalara, and Tapomoy Dey, VP of ERP Applications Development at Oracle, Dey commented, “Businesses want to get paid as quickly as possible and focus on [value-added activities]. The best way to get paid faster is to ensure you’re fully compliant with the data elements that you need to pass on to the government entity.”

Key benefits:

• Seamless integration: Seeded selection of Avalara as an e-invoicing service provider on Oracle’s native electronic invoicing framework gives users the same proven integration platform that’s currently deployed with Avalara AvaTax, Avalara Exemption Certificate Management, Avalara for Communications, and Avalara for Excise.
• Enterprise ready: The solution provides a configurable system built to handle high-transaction volumes, automatic encryption, and role-based user interface.
  
• Broad global coverage: The solution provides full functionality for outgoing (AR) and incoming (AP) documents with support for PEPPOL (e.g., Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Germany) and non-PEPPOL (e.g., Italy, Poland, Spain) countries, with coverage for Hungary, Portugal, and more coming.
  
• Reduces complexity of e-invoicing implementations: The integration provides a simplified configuration experience as new requirements and mandates arise.
  
• Centralized live reporting: System users use a single hub to monitor document statuses with live acknowledgment for acceptance or rejection by tax authorities and configurable data validation to reduce rejection of invoices. If an invoice is rejected by the authority, the credit memo is suppressed to allow for correction.
  
• Enriched e-invoice data: Users can comply with specific tax authority requirements with Avalara’s Universal Business Language (UBL) extension to capture any field when running, generating, and transferring XML. The solution also provides the ability to embed PDF or other attachments to meet tax authority requirements.

At the event, companies including NOVONIX, True Temper Sports, Astec, and Veritone described how they’ve transformed their operations using Oracle and Avalara technology.

• Finance transformation with Oracle Cloud at NOVONIX

Learnings from an automation overhaul in the NOVONIX finance department through the adoption of Oracle Cloud ERP and Avalara tax automation software reduced costs and allowed the company to move toward a robust and streamlined finance process, and to operate at the highest scale possible.

• Finance transformation with Avalara and Automus Consulting at True Temper Sports

Automus took a deep dive into strategies for implementing Oracle Cloud ERP and a tax engine project for True Temper Sports and other manufacturing and distribution companies. True Temper Sports discussed best practices and what it means to work with business partners on digital transformation projects that fuel finance transformation across its multinational business.

• A journey to financial automation for Astec and Veritone

Astec implemented Oracle Cloud ERP and Avalara as part of their digital transformation initiative to transform how they connect with people, products, and processes to operate more efficiently and effectively as OneASTEC. In a similar transformational overhaul, Veritone implemented Oracle Cloud ERP and Avalara for multiple United States legal entities to increase their operational efficiency.

Avalara and Oracle have collaborated since 2013 to alleviate the burden of tax compliance and to support businesses by automating mandatory regulatory requirements. Whether you’re new to e-invoicing, your company has outgrown your current manual compliance processes, or you simply want to free up time and resources for better things, Avalara can help boost your team’s efficiency and plan for the future.

Learn more about the Avalara and Oracle relationship.