How ONESOURCE Determination solved Cisco's tax challenges

Introduction

Cisco Systems, Inc. is the worldwide leader in networking for the internet. It provides the broadest line of solutions for transporting data, voice, and video within buildings, across campuses, and around the world. Cisco’s products and services help customers build their own network infrastructure and enable communication with customers, prospects, business partners, suppliers, and employees. Its IP networking solutions are the foundation of the internet and most corporate, education, and government networks around the world.

Proof points:

• One centralized audit and compliance database of all transactions for reporting, auditing, and compliance requirements. 
• Reduction in time required for returns processing, enabling more available time for strategic tax planning and analysis
• Increased responsiveness and reduced system maintenance costs due to elimination of expensive VAT system

Challenge

With tax professionals and systems distributed worldwide, tax consolidation and visibility became a challenge. Due to its rapid expansion into new markets and increased channels of distribution, Cisco needed a central audit and compliance database. Its goal was to find a truly global solution that could address global business practices, providing real-time, global tax determination for each transaction.

Cisco’s technical team required a single, centralized tax solution that could connect to all their systems worldwide with the scalability and performance capabilities necessary to support their significant global transaction business volume. To ensure an effective rollout, Cisco required that the chosen tax solution meet all business and technical requirements of a rigorous pilot test.

A tax solution that provided Cisco’s tax professionals with the ability to respond to and fully support the company’s rapidly changing global business environment was a top priority. They needed a solution that would empower them to quickly and easily implement tax, business, and system changes without requiring substantial support and custom programming by IT. 

To be appropriately responsive, Cisco tax professionals in each country wanted access to the tax system so they could manage tax determination for their business units and ensure that they correctly met the requirements of the tax authorities where they did business. They needed a configurable solution that provided real-time control and visibility over all their tax data and changes that affected their areas of responsibility. In addition, their list of requirements included tools to facilitate planning and modeling for strategic decision making, as well as a global exemption certificate and product exception management and application. 

The global transaction tax solution needed to seamlessly integrate with their mission critical Oracle 11i E-Business Suite Applications and provide accurate tax determination for all sales and purchase transactions at the line and item level, as well as at the total invoice level.