Objectives
The client required technology partners to help them tackle the modernisation challenge. Objectives of BBD’s involvement in this challenge included the custom software development for:
- Automation of revenue assessment and administration
- Implementation of process controls
- Adherence to compliance
Benefits
BBD played a key technology enablement role during the modernisation, in which the client realised the following benefits:
- Effective revenue collection, which increased by more than 43% in 5 years
- Cost efficiencies, evident in the cost to revenue ratio improving from 1.17% in 2009/10, to 0.93% in 2015/16, to 0.84% in 2018/19
- Improved service to taxpayers through significantly shorter turnaround times, an example being average personal income tax assessment processing improving from 180 days in 2006, to an average of 0.22 days in 2019
- Reduction in paper. Despite business growth the client managed to reduce the pieces of paper by an estimated 98% from 40,000,000 to 800,000 between 2006 and 2015 alone
Overview of the solution
BBD’s long-standing partnership has enabled the client to become a very efficient public sector agency,
saving on time and operational costs, all while improving taxpayer compliance. The programme has also delivered measurable business value on an annual basis.
At its core, the transformation provided for the automation of key processes to boost productivity and cost efficiencies, releasing people to focus on value-adding activities such as exception handling, enforcement and other tax-base broadening actions. To ensure business continuity of the client’s operations, solutions implemented are running in real-time mode.
Approach
The modernisation programme focused on organisational systems and processes, providing a platform for sustainable revenue collection through the following initiatives:
- Delivery of significant business value, while leveraging existing technology investments (where feasible) through the updated design of the technical architecture for the modernised assessment programme, together with a roadmap focusing on modernised technical solutions
- Implementation of BBD’s business automation frameworks and accelerators. This message-oriented middleware switch functions as an orchestration engine that communicates with various systems in the client environment. These include legacy mainframes as well as more modern .NET and Java based systems. Functionality enabled by the processor spans electronic tax returns, forms, supporting document processing, letters, emails and SMSs
- Enterprise-wide case management and workflow solutioning through the frameworks and accelerators, thereby effectively managing all business processes requiring user intervention or interaction. Functionality implemented comprises workflow cases, cash desk activities, letter processing, customs, contact centre integration, branch queue management, dashboards, tax submissions, legal processes, dispute handling, debt collection and audit processes
- Analysis, design and development of management information system reporting to provide detailed daily operational metrics and statistics
- Analysis, design and implementation of a national contact centre providing telephony integration for the client
- This has led to improved metrics, quality of service, consistent first-time resolution of issues and significant cost saving
- Analysis, design and implementation of databases, orchestrations and workflows to support the single registration of a legal entity and its respective tax products
- Analysis, design and implementation of a series of mobile solutions to enable mobile registration, mobile e-filing, customs declarations, customs inspections and cash and carry audits
- Business analysis of modernisation initiatives and projects (such as key business challenges and user requirements), together with draft functional specifications and designs to address these and reap optimal business benefits
- Design and implementation of the personal income tax, corporate income tax, VAT and customs modernisation programme
- High-volume processing solutions successfully analysed, designed, developed, integrated and deployed
This has been a demanding project, but due to BBD’s co-shoring solution, we could utilise our distributed development model to quickly scale to the required large team comprising software engineers and business analysts – ensuring the delivery of ongoing business value for this public sector agency.
Impact of BBD’s partnership
BBD has been a strategic modernisation partner for the client for over a decade, a period in which the agency achieved global recognition for its technology and innovation.
Out of BBD’s current workforce, there is a pool of more than 100 individuals, who have a collective wealth of more than 450 years’ experience at the client alone. These individuals bring deep technical expertise, as well as extensive domain knowledge in the areas of Tax, Customs and Excise, IVR / Customer Contact and Telephony solutions. The impact of this partnership is that the client has been able to significantly improve business turnaround times, from weeks to near-real time:
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