Taxmarc founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Marc van Rijbroek created the Taxmarc tax engine in 2006 to simplify the calculation of indirect tax for businesses using SAP. The product speeds up the monthly financial closing process, reduces the headcount required for internal tax audits, and increases an organization’s confidence that it’s complying with all relevant tax laws. It conducts transactions in multiple tax jurisdictions and can process thousands of invoices a day. The company is also developing a web-based interface that businesses can use with any application, not just SAP.
In 2015, van Rijbroek sold Taxmarc to PwC and joined the consultancy. After years serving clients and developing the product at PwC, he saw an opportunity in early 2022 to relaunch his business as an independent entity. But to do this, he had to quickly set up a new IT infrastructure for Taxmarc without disrupting its current users, which include 20 global enterprises in the consumer goods, manufacturing, and chemicals industries.
The team that van Rijbroek had assembled for the new company was not prepared for the technical challenge. “We didn’t have enough knowledge about the cloud and hosting SAP systems to create an independent Taxmarc so quickly,” says van Rijbroek. “We needed a partner who could move us to the cloud, manage our infrastructure, and support us in developing new features and capabilities, so we could focus on our core business.”
inQdo is responsive to our needs. Their teams listen to our requirements, and we discover the best solution together. It’s a great relationship.
Quick, Successful Migration to SAP on AWS Cuts Costs by 40%
Van Rijbroek reached out to AWS Partner inQdo, which he’d worked with at PwC. inQdo had the SAP skills and AWS expertise that Taxmarc needed to launch a cloud-based service. Within 2 months, the two companies worked together to migrate Taxmarc to SAP on AWS, which offers proven approaches backed by experience supporting SAP customers in the cloud. “Meeting such a tight deadline was challenging,” says Peter Perebooms, co-founder of inQdo. “I’m really proud we managed to keep costs low and keep Taxmarc stable for its clients. It went so smoothly because our teams work well together.”
To help it quickly deploy SAP systems, inQdo uses AWS CloudFormation, which speeds up cloud provisioning with infrastructure as code. The company also uses Amazon CloudWatch to monitor AWS resources and applications. This means it can continually observe resource status and intervene when necessary to keep the platform up and running. Taxmarc was pleased with the migration. “inQdo is responsive to our needs,” says van Rijbroek. “Its teams listen to our requirements, and we discover the best solution together. It’s a great relationship.”
Taxmarc has reduced its monthly infrastructure costs by 40 percent by using AWS on-demand computing, compared to its previous setup with PwC. For non-production systems, the solution requires compute resources for just a few days a month, so paying only for when systems are in use is more economical than paying for a peak-capacity level of service in an on-premises setup, where systems sit idle for much of the time. Taxmarc also optimized operational costs because inQdo provides a managed service that saves Taxmarc the hassle and expense of hiring full-time employees to manage its cloud platform.
Our aim is to simplify the cloud. We use AWS and cloud infrastructure to make it easy for Taxmarc to achieve its goals.
Innovating for a Future of Growth with inQdo and Using AWS
Het Taxmarc-team kan nu innoveren en nieuwe mogelijkheden ontwikkelen die hun groei ondersteunen. Bijvoorbeeld om haar klantenbestand uit te breiden buiten SAP-gebruikers, moet Taxmarc gaan samenwerken met andere ERP-systemen. In samenwerking met inQdo creëerde Taxmarc een API (application programming interface) die gegevens uit elk systeem verzamelt om de indirecte belastingverplichtingen te berekenen. De twee bedrijven lanceerden de nieuwe functie na 2 weken samen ontwikkelen met behulp van Amazon API Gateway, waarmee ontwikkelaars API’s kunnen creëren, onderhouden en beveiligen. De mogelijkheid om te integreren met elk platform betekent dat Taxmarc meer kleine en middelgrote bedrijven aanspreekt, naast de grote ondernemingen.
De vraag naar Taxmarc groeit naarmate overheden strenger worden in het handhaven van de belastingwetgeving. Door te werken met inQdo kan Taxmarc eenvoudig zijn capaciteit opschalen om aan deze grotere vraag te voldoen, dankzij de Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), die veilige en schaalbare rekencapaciteit biedt. Het toewijzen van extra Amazon EC2-instanties kan nu snel wanneer grote hoeveelheden klantgegevens verwerkt moeten worden. Die kunnen oplopen tot 10 miljoen records in één batch. “Het is ons doel is om de cloud te vereenvoudigen”, zegt Perebooms. “We gebruiken AWS en een cloud-infrastructuur om het Taxmarc gemakkelijk te maken om hun doelen te bereiken.”
Taxmarc heeft grote ambities voor de toekomst, waaronder het bouwen van een cloud-native versie van zijn tax engine en het lanceren van data-analyse- en ‘tax auditing’-diensten. inQdo blijft het bedrijf ondersteunen met het beheren van de infrastructuur en het leveren van engineering expertise voor nieuwe features en producten. “Toen ik voor het eerst overwoog PwC te verlaten, dacht ik dat het misschien te moeilijk zou zijn om Taxmarc snel naar de cloud te verplaatsen en toch alles soepel te laten werken voor onze klanten”, zegt van Rijbroek. “Maar dat en meer hebben we bereikt door de juiste partner te vinden en samen de uitdagingen op te lossen.”
