Item: Vertex
Rating: 10
Author: Jack Schaffer

Overall Satisfaction with Vertex

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

O Series is used by 3 of our entities that deal with sales tax for information services, software, ASP/SAAS, and other types of tangible personal property in all taxing jurisdictions in the U.S. By using O Series, it applies the complex taxability determinations out of the hands of our A/R associates.

Pros and Cons

Pros

O Series determines the proper tax jurisdiction where sales tax should be applied.
Once the product mapping is completed by experienced professional, taxability determinations are consistantly applied.
Updates are provided monthly with rate and rule revisions that are automatically applied.
User defined products can be set to handle special situations that may not be covered by O Series. There is flexibility in the system to handle these.

Cons

O Series could be expanded to cover additional product categories for taxability not currently covered.

Return on Investment

Upon implementation, we saved 70% on dealing with sales tax calculations, administration, and compliance with sales tax.
Most months where we were able to send our data file to our returns outsource provider without having any adjustments.
We were able to reduce the cost charged by our returns provider because they had less work involved in producing our returns.

Alternatives Considered

Avalara

We looked at these systems and they had good functionality much like O Series. We found that there were no certified interfaces available between them and Lawson SE. We did not want to write our own interface so we went with O Series.

Systems Integrated With

O Series was integrated with Lawson SE ERP system. This ERP is used throughout our entire organization.

As I indicated earlier, we were led to understand that there was a certified interface to our ERP system. Once implementation started, we realized that the interface did not function and the interface had to be rewritten by the vendor. This caused a major delay in our implementation schedule and was completed several months late.

Support Rating

We have had very little delay in response time when we had a problem or needed education on handling an issue. Vertex has always provided immediate response or identified our issues and was able to assist.

Vertex O Series Impact

O Series increased our level of compliance by 60%, reduced the amount of time spent on sales tax and compliance related activities.

Pre-Sale Experience

We had great interaction with the sales associated at Vertex. They were not responsible for the interface as that was the responsibility of the ERP vendor. The ERP vendor represented that there was an good working interface but that turned out to be false.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Our evaluation and selection process for a sales tax system was spot on. We should have done better in selecting our ERP system and looked closer at the available interface.

Likelihood to Recommend

There are many ERP systems that have a certified Vertex O Series interface. However, Vertex does not always have a certified interface to all ERP systems. Our implementation did not have a certified interface available so the vendor had to develop one. That was a difficult implementation.

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