Item: Vertex
Rating: 9
Author: Sarah Taylor

Overall Satisfaction with Vertex

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Vertex O Series On Premise for Sales and Consumer Use Tax. We also have the Exemption Certificate Manager to manager our customer tax exemption certificates. We have various Plus Tools used within our SAP ERP system and have plans to possibly get a few more Plus Tools.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Vertex provides flexibility in its tax data mapping options
Vertex is always looking for new ways to better meet the needs of their customers
Vertex has knowledgeable staff to help with any needs that customers may have.

Cons

Vertex can continue to automate their current system and find ways to improve not only usability but also speed of creating new mappings, new entries, etc.
Vertex can continue to improve 9.0 by making the system more user friendly
Vertex can look at ways to improve customer experience and specific mapping needs for smaller industries that aren't as widely represented as others like e commerce.

Return on Investment

Vertex has helped us greatly reduce the amount of risk that we have around our sales and use tax processes.
Vertex can be costly but audit assessments can add up much more quickly.

Key Differentiators

Tax content support
Ease-of-Use
Scalability
Tax accuracy
Reporting

We were looking for tax software that would be easy to maintain, provide accurate compliance, and had regular updates for new rates and laws. We wanted a tax software that was flexible and allowed for some of our more nuanced tax scenarios that come with manufacturing and mining industries. Vertex met all of these requirements.

Key Insights

Do you think Vertex delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Vertex's feature set?

Yes

Did Vertex live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Vertex go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Vertex again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Vertex is well suited to enhance any sales and use tax processes within an organization. Implementation does take a pretty large amount of time but once the system and mapping design are in place, the system is easy to update and maintain. New updates like 8.0 to 9.0 can be a bit of a pain and require additional resources to keep the system up to date but hopefully, these types of updates will be far and few between.

Vertex Feature Ratings

Using Vertex

Users and Roles

4 - Vertex is only directly used by the people in our tax department, but its features are far-reaching so all of our finance department is in some way affected by Vertex, either by tax determinations, exemption certificates, tax credits, or mapping changes within our add on tools that work between Vertex and our ERP system.

Support Headcount Required

5 - We have a dedicated IT person that assists with Vertex and then we maintain our Vertex system ourselves within the tax department. We upload the monthly updates and pull the needed service releases which are moved into our various environments and tested by ourselves and our IT person. We do use consultants when needed.

Business Processes Supported

Sales and Use Tax Compliance
Tax Exemption Certificate Management
Tax Mapping Design

Future Planned Uses

The new ITI Freemium Dashboard

Likelihood to Renew

It would be very difficult and costly to replace the Vertex software as it is deeply integrated into our ERP system and processes.

Post-Sale Experience

Vertex has many knowledgeable people to assist with any aspect of implementation, maintenance, or new feature utilization.

Evaluating Vertex and Competitors

Products Replaced

Vertex Implementation

Implementation Rating

Though the system took a while to implement it is much easier to maintain and update.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Third-party professional services

We worked in conjunction with Vertex support, in house, and PwC to implement Vertex. It took quite a bit of time to implement and set up.

Implementation Issues

Mapping Design around our current data points

Vertex Support

Vertex Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Knowledgeable team Problems get solved No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success	Slow Initial Response

Premium Support

Yes we have premium support and contract with Vertex on various upgrades or projects as needed. We also use third-party consultants to assist on occasion.

Bug Resolution

Yes - We are still waiting on a fix for an issue we have with some of our tax exemption certificate images within Vertex that show an error. They can be reloaded into the system but we have so many certificates in our system that this would take a very long time to do one at a time. This occurred when we went from 8.0 to 9.0. Luckily we keep backup copies in our file systems.

Using Vertex

Usability

The system is fairly easy to learn in order to begin using it for basic functions. Some features like tax assist rules can be a bit more difficult to create.