Accounting Digital Transformation

A large mid-tier accounting firm were aiming to reduce the cost of manually processing mail received from the ATO generated from tax return assessments. The accounting firm processed approximately 10,000 tax returns annually.  Each tax return could produce up to 4 separate pieces of correspondence from the ATO and take several weeks to process internally.   We were engaged by the firm to review their current paper-based processes and to design a future state process that would reduce cost and generate significant productivity improvements.

An organisation wide lean process review had identified significant waste across the firms tax compliance processes. A key opportunity for productivity improvements was the management of paper documents received from the ATO and distributed to their clients. Documents received by the firm’s mail room were sorted and sent to a central team for processing.  This team would then review the item and manually create a client letter based on a standard set of templates (Notice of Assessment, Statement of Account, General Interest Charge etc.).  The letters were then printed and sent via internal mail to the relevant managers for review and signing.   Once signed the team assistants would return the letters via internal mail to the mail room for distribution to clients.

Through a series of design workshops with key stakeholders we developed a ‘To-Be’ process that transformed the way these documents were managed.  The future state process involved scanning the document as it was received , automatically generating a standard letter based on the ATO document type and then sending via workflow to a manager if there was a discrepancy in their tax assessment (Refund or Payable).  Once approved for distribution the assessment and ATO document were automatically sent to the client via email.  An electronic signature was applied to the standard client letter as part of the workflow.  To enable the future state process we worked with a series of technology vendors to build the workflow.  We then worked with the senior executives at the firm to develop and implement a change strategy to transition the impacted teams to the new process and technology.

The implementation of the ‘ATO Digital Correspondence’ project provided significant business value to the firm in reduced costs and increased productivity improvements.

• It reduced the end to end processing time for ATO documents from 2-4 weeks to less than 4 days significantly improving the client experience
• Managers time that was previously spent on administration could be redirected to other value adding advisory services
• Annual savings on paper, print and postage were in excess of $60k per annum

Subsequently our client designed and implemented a client portal that enabled client correspondence to be automatically directed via workflow to this secure communication channel.