Introducing our inaugural European Taxologist Awards: ‘Enabled by technology, driven by people’

We received numerous impressive nominations for our inaugural European Taxologist Awards – a celebration for what we sometimes call ‘Tax Pioneers’ across the continent – but we had to pick winners, which were all announced this week at SYNERGY 2017 on Thursday 19 October.

Tax Technologist of the Year

First up, the winner of ‘Tax Technologist of the Year’ was Sky: The telecoms giant worked with ONESOURCE’s Corporate Tax, Indirect Tax and Tax Provision products to address a significant organisational challenge, bringing together previously disparate companies and creating standardised processes. It partnered with us to enable a consistent approach which would address these challenges, with great success.

Other finalists in this category included TD Direct Investing, which used ONESOURCE’s AEOI (Automatic Exchange of Information) product to dramatically reduce back-office administration and boost efficiency, having relied heavily in paper-based processes in the past; and Takeda, which uses ONESOURCE’s Workflow Manager and Dataflow tools, having implemented these as part of the globalisation of the tax function.

ONESOURCE New Project of the Year

The winner of the ONESOURCE ‘New Project of the Year’ award went to information management company, Veritas, which met the challenges of increased transparency and country-by-country reporting highly successfully, having switched from traditional spreadsheets and labour-intensive methods.

Other finalists for this award were biotech company Abcam which used our Corporate Tax and Transfer Pricing Documenter solutions to allow greater control and consistency of documentation, delivering time savings and more robust processes with tax returns; and building materials specialist, Cemex, which used our BEPS Action Manager, Transfer Pricing and Workflow Manager tools to increase automation and boost consistency, whilst also keeping up to date with regulations.

Accounting Technologist of the Year

Last but certainly not least, the winner of ‘Accounting Technologist of the Year’ was cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky, which used our Corporate Tax and Statutory Reporting products to great effect, having recognised the need for greater transparency.

Other finalists in this category were Omnicom, which used our statutory Reporting and Corporate Tax solutions to maintain consistency across over 120 entities; and construction and engineering business, Costain, which opted for ONESOURCE Statutory Reporting to work vastly more efficiently.

‘It is impossible to abstract the technology from the people that use it’
These companies all embraced tax technology and delivered significant value. The individuals behind these decisions showed themselves to be problem solvers and status quo challengers, and true pioneers of tax process efficiency.

As such, we feel privileged to be able to give recognition to these tax departments and individuals excelling in driving significant value together with ONESOURCE.

The world is not getting simple; requirements are growing, and – in the words of our MD, Laurence Kiddle, who was celebrating our customers’ achievements across EMEA at SYNERGY 2017 this week – “It is, of course, impossible to abstract the technology from the people that use it.
“This is not limited to very large businesses. Some of our most forward thinking customers are mid-size companies with complex business models. I was struck by the different ways in which technology was enabling tax teams…If they were enabled by technology, they were all driven by people,” he said.

Full video highlights from the European Taxologist Awards can be viewed here.

Congratulations to all of the winners!