When Adobe set out to remove 40% of the customization from its SAP system for managing indirect taxes, Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE Determination was the only solution that could meet its compliance needs and address the growing complexity of sales and use tax, VAT, GST, and industry and country-specific tax and business requirements around the world.
It’s a decision that paid big dividends. Adobe used Determination to transform its manual processes into a single, global platform for managing indirect tax. That enabled it to achieve total control over its indirect tax process and significantly reduce risks associated with indirect tax calculation, reporting, and compliance.
The result?
- The company reduced ABAP coding / SAP customizations related to tax by 95%!
- Its tax staff can now complete sales tax returns in 30 minutes compared to the previous two weeks.
- And the company reduced unnecessary tax management costs by more than $1 million.
Adobe certainly isn’t alone in reaping these kinds of benefits. Thousands of global customers have discovered the value of working with Thomson Reuters and its ONESOURCE platform and partnerships to help companies create the ideal solution for their indirect tax processes. You, too, can draw on Thomson Reuters to see similar results for your indirect tax processes. But why should you do that, and what do you get with Thomson Reuters?
Here are some questions, answers, and examples that further dive into the benefits of working with Thomson Reuters.
Jump to ↓
What is Thomson Reuters’ platform, and how do indirect tax professionals benefit from it?
How does ONESOURCE support international VAT?
How extensive is the ONESOURCE content—and how often is it updated?
Does Thomson Reuters use artificial intelligence to strengthen its solutions?
What is Thomson Reuters’ platform, and how do indirect tax professionals benefit from it?
The ONESOURCE cloud-native platform is a suite of corporate tax software and services designed to automate and streamline tax, trade, and financial reporting processes. It provides enterprise speed, scale, and performance, processing transactions with a high level of accuracy and consistency. By providing a centralized platform for indirect tax calculation, recording, and reporting, ONESOURCE reduces the need for IT involvement and puts more control in the hands of the tax department.
The cloud-native platform was a perfect fit for Informatica, a leader in Enterprise Cloud Data Management. Informatica has pioneered new categories of software and services powered by AI and a cloud-first, cloud-native, end-to-end data management platform that connects, manages, and unifies data across systems.
“ONESOURCE has given us more visibility and, in some respects, puts more responsibility on us … but we welcome that! It saved our IT department countless hours they would have spent keeping systems up to date or installing custom rates.” –Informatica’s former Director of Global Transaction Tax.
How does ONESOURCE support international VAT?
When Adobe set out to cut SAP customizations, it faced another obstacle: The European Union’s tax jurisdiction changed how e-commerce companies must approach VAT. Instead of paying VAT in the supplier country, it became payable where the customer resides. Which meant that Adobe had to apply the local VAT rate in any of the 28 (at the time) countries in the European Union.
That meant that Adobe needed an indirect tax system with more nuances, not fewer. Often, those nuances come through customizations.
ONESOURCE Determination, however, provides a single tax engine that calculates all the different tax types with one tax call. It covers more than 60,000 tax jurisdictions in 62 countries—more than our competition—and 460,000 product and service categories using the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) and the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS). It also supports e-filing in 38 countries and an additional 18 countries with a simplified VAT return. Our VAT compliance solution is battle-tested by some of the largest global customers and firms and has been in use for more than a decade.
That’s why IDC positioned ONESOURCE as a leader in capabilities in its 2024 IDC MarketScape Vendor Assessment of Worldwide Sales and Use Tax and Cloud-enabled SaaS Solutions.
Case Study
How Adobe turned a “perfect storm” of tax challenges into an opportunity
View case study ↗How extensive is the ONESOURCE content—and how often is it updated?
Tax legislation changes frequently, and keeping up with those changes can be difficult, a challenge that is compounded when a business must also quickly adapt to constantly evolving economic and operating environments.
When a tax department relies solely on generic internal systems to manage its indirect tax obligations, those legislative changes can be missed or complicated to implement. Even when a tax department stays current with indirect tax changes that impact its organization, IT may still be required to implement those changes in the transaction systems.
Informatica knows this. That’s why it uses ONESOURCE Determination to keep up with changes automatically.
Determination draws on ONESOURCE’s extensive tax content databases, including over 1 billion rates and rules supporting indirect tax compliance across more than 69,000 tax authorities worldwide. In 2024, Thomson Reuters managed 2.9 million tax rate and product taxability changes across its 460,000 product and service codes. And, with product managers working around the clock, this content is updated in as near to real time as we can manage.
Because Informatica uses ONESOURCE Determination, they’re confident that the changes impacting indirect tax rules and rates used in its business are being continually monitored and kept current. The peace of mind that ONESOURCE Determination provides allows the tax team to focus on other indirect tax priorities, knowing that indirect taxes on invoices will continue to be accurate.
“That’s been a really big benefit, as I don’t always have to monitor … ONESOURCE has helped me keep up with regulatory changes,” says Rob Newlin.
Does the ONESOURCE platform integrate with tax solutions provided by ERP vendors, such as SAP and Oracle?
When Cisco needed an indirect tax solution to address its rapid expansion into new markets and increased distribution channels, it turned to ONESOURCE Determination.
The ONESOURCE platform provides Cisco with real-time control and visibility overall tax data and changes and, significantly, enables Cisco to integrate with its mission-critical Oracle 11i E-Business Suite Applications seamlessly.
Thomson Reuters offers standard, pre-built integrations that are certified and endorsed, connecting global business systems to a single, centralized tax engine. We have embedded our sales and use tax solution with SAP and will have Pagero embedded in Oracle this year. If you require tax calculation closer to the transaction origin, we offer edge computing deployment options that maintains management within a single tax engine.
ONESOURCE Determination offers Cisco automated integration application/system upgrades, providing the ability to reduce the time required for returns processing and enabling more available time for strategic tax planning and analysis.
Cisco estimated that the partnership with Thomson Reuters significantly increased the accuracy and consistency of sales, use, and VAT determination on all sales and purchase transactions worldwide.
Does Thomson Reuters use artificial intelligence to strengthen its solutions?
Thomson Reuters solutions use generative AI to offer transformative value through high-quality advice, removal of barriers to improve productivity, and transforming the way compliance professionals work—thereby elevating the strategic role of tax professionals. For example, ONESOURCE with CoCounsel is a GenAI assistant that frees up professionals to focus more on complex, strategic work.
And there’s more GenAI on the horizon for Thomson Reuters. Later in 2025, we’ll be rolling out GenAI product mapping, anomaly detection, and regulatory insights. Anomaly Detection analyzes transactions in real-time to confirm the application of the correct tax rate and will be deployed as a real-time dashboard.
Who does Thomson Reuters partner with—and how do those partnerships benefit indirect tax professionals and organizations?
One primary reason Informatica selected ONESOURCE Determination is for the strong partnership between Thomson Reuters and Oracle. Informatica is turning to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as part of a multi-cloud strategy, and ONESOURCE helps simplify processes and elevate performance for Oracle customers.
Partnerships are a key component in Thomson Reuters’ delivery of ready-made solutions that companies can pick up and run with.
Over the 173 years we’ve been in business, Thomson Reuters has built trusted relationships with the influencers that drive decision-making for indirect tax solutions. This includes major ERP vendor sales teams in the enterprise sector and the largest global accounting firms and system integrators.
Thomson Reuters achieved SAP’s Partner of the Year Award in 2025, is a two-time winner of the SAP Pinnacle Award (2010, 2019) and was the winner of the 2020 SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass Apex Award. Our extensive ecosystem of partners encompasses not only ERPs but also the Big 7 and beyond, offering services for consulting and implementing ONESOURCE.
Now, a question for you: Are you convinced that ONESOURCE solutions are the best option for your indirect tax processes?
Scale with critical accuracy
Harness the power of automation with ONESOURCE Indirect Tax
Learn more ↗
