Why would you attend our workshop?
The rising trend in volatility, uncertainty and complexity across many sectors is the reason why companies today operate in a so-called VUCA world. This English acronym stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The changing world to which companies must adapt creates numerous pitfalls for businesses if not acted appropriately. However, a competitive advantage can be achieved when businesses can react to these kinds of challenges in the best possible way. To do so, you need a good strategy rather than an ad hoc approach.
One of the most difficult challenges is the Worldwide VAT Compliance with legal requirements, such as e-invoicing, periodic tax reporting, SAF-T, e-accounting. Today, I can see a clear trend of an increasing number of digital compliance regulations worldwide. On top of that, existing regulations evolve and become more challenging. In other words, existing and upcoming legal mandates are requiring more and more data and always more in real-time.
The most common mistake that I see is that a lot of companies implement short term solutions to attack their Worldwide VAT Compliance. The reasons businesses make this mistake are:
- Legal requirements are never introduced at the same time. This can cause businesses to see each legal requirement as a separate project. Hence, a lot of companies have very different solutions for each legal requirement.
- Penalties will be imposed for any legal requirement that is not complied with. This causes companies to implement a solution very quickly. But, it is doubtful whether this is the best solution.
- Most businesses are not aware of the fact that legal requirements are updated very regularly, and most local solutions are not created for these purposes. Many solutions can simply not cover updates, so companies are forced to implement new solutions for each legal update.
- It is very easy for companies to lose the overview because of the variety of legal requirements that exist per country. Also, the nature of the legal requirements can be very different which causes companies to see these requirements as separate projects.
Within PIKON we recommend our customers to implement long term solutions in their SAP systems and to approach Worldwide VAT Compliance from a strategic point of view that is aligned with the general business strategy.
To do so, PIKON offers Strategy Workshops in which we intensively work together with our customers. We analyze all countries in which they are operating and investigate each legal requirement per country to determine the best solution. After these Strategy Workshops, we deliver and present a detailed Strategy Roadmap to our customers. Here they can find the proposed strategic solution to be compliant with all legal requirements they face. Important for us:
- One global solution that addresses legal requirements in the emerging digital world.
- A solution that supports the end-to-end reporting process driving efficiency, standardization and simplification worldwide.
- Generation and submission of reports directly within and from your SAP system. No need for external partners or external software anymore.
How a Strategy Workshop with PIKON for your Worldwide VAT Compliance in SAP would look like and the goals of such a Strategy Workshop will be explained in detail below.
Are you convinced about a strategic workshop?
Why you need a compliance strategy for your SAP.
We are your strategic SAP partner for compliance.
The Strategy Workshops with PIKON
In general, the Strategy Workshop that we offer our customers consists of three phases:
Initial Analysis
Strategy Workshop
Strategic Roadmap & Cost-Benefit Analysis
Goals of the Strategy Workshop to make your VAT compliant in SAP
Before explaining what you can expect during the different phases, I would like to highlight the goals we want to achieve together with you during and after the Strategy Workshop:
- Understand your current pain points.
- Understand your current compliance processes.
- Understand your business needs.
- Clarify all existing and upcoming legal requirements that are relevant for your business.
- Clarify the proposed SAP-solutions that cover your business needs and legal requirements to which you must comply.
- Clarify how the potential process would look like in your SAP-system.
The ultimate goal is to present your Strategic Roadmap (phase 3), in which you find detailed documentation about all legal requirements in all countries in which you are operating. For each country, it will specify how each legal requirement will be covered and how the process will look like in your SAP system. Additionally, you receive a detailed quotation together with this Strategic Roadmap for you to determine how to proceed.
The above-mentioned approach is not fixed. Meaning that together with you we can emphasize certain topics during the Strategy Workshop. Aswell desired goals and results of the Strategy Workshop can be customized. For example, on request, we can perform a cost-benefit analysis for you to compare your As-Is situation with your To-Be process if implemented by PIKON.
Phase 1: Initial Analysis
During phase 1 we kick-off the project and gather all input from both sides to be fully prepared for the tailor-made Strategy Workshop in phase 2.
This first phase will start with an introduction from both sides to get to know the involved people. Second, we’ll have snapshot interviews in which you can express your expectations of the workshop, your specific wishes and what your desired goals are. Finally, during this initial analysis, we go through a questionnaire that we have prepared upfront to get all relevant information from your side. Topics involved in this questionnaire are:
- List of countries in which you operate
- List of requirements you fulfil at the moment
- System landscape
- AS-IS processes and current solutions
- …
Phase 2: The Strategy Workshop
In this phase, which is the Strategy Workshop itself, we start the workshop with a small recap about what was discussed during phase one. Making sure everyone is on the same page, but also for you to confirm that we understood your business requirements correctly.
After the introduction, we can start with the core parts of the Strategy Workshop consisting of two blocks:
1. SAP Technologies for Compliance
Here we present and explain the SAP solution(s) which we recommend for your SAP system to be fully compliant with local legal requirements. Also, we explain the differences between the proposed SAP solutions. This is key to fully understand the approach and strategy we propose.
2. Legal Compliance per Country with SAP
In this block, we’ll work on a country per country basis as our consultants have country-specific expertise. Hence, depending on the countries in which you are active, multiple PIKON consultants can be involved at this point.
For each country, we first list all existing and upcoming legal requirements to give you a global overview. Afterwards, we zoom in on each requirement separately, explain the key principles and what it’s about. Subsequently, we present you the SAP solution which covers this specific legal requirement and what it would look like in your SAP system. At the end of each country discussion, we show you a summary of all requirements and the corresponding solution.
On request we can give system demonstrations of the solutions in one of our own SAP-systems.
Phase 3: The Strategic Roadmap for your VAT compliance in SAP
The end product of this project will be the Strategic Roadmap which will be documented and presented to you in a separate third session. This Strategic Roadmap contains a detailed description for each legal requirement per country, combined with the proposed solution overview and architecture of how it would work in your SAP system.
For the Strategic Roadmap we will work with two parameters:
- Complexity: Based on our expertise and experience we will rate the complexity of each requirement in terms of implementation.
- Priority: Together with you, we will rate the priority of each requirement or more in general of each country.
This can depend on a lot of factors, but it will help to define priorities and planning of implementation.
Last but not least, a quotation will be delivered at the end so you have an idea about the costs of a potential implementation.