For almost every company that is handling the tax operations, it can be quite hectic as well as time-consuming to wind up the tasks. Avalara's software solutions help businesses automate their tax operations, so they don't have to worry about navigating through varying taxation systems across the world.

Kindly brief us about the company, its specialisation and the services that your company offers.

We have a saying here at Avalara. We live and breathe tax, so you don't have to. In a nutshell, Avalara's software solutions help businesses to automate their tax operations, so they don't have to worry about navigating through varying taxation systems across the world.

It is common knowledge that taxation systems around the world are renowned for being extremely complicated and diverse. The tax function of any economy is usually a labyrinth of deadlines, processes, and updates. Keeping up with these complex compliance requirements is no easy task. But that's where Avalara comes into the picture.

For close to two decades, Avalara has been in the business of providing the best-in-class solutions for organisations looking to manage their expanding tax compliance obligations across various indirect tax regimes like sales tax, VAT, GST, etc.,

In India, Avalara has been guiding businesses with automating their tax operations and maneuvering through the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and now, with incredible strides in global e-commerce and others for international taxation. We provide software as a service solution to businesses and help them maintain GST compliance by automating processes around e-invoicing, e-way billing, GST registration, GST return preparation, sales tax liability calculations, tax return filing, smart reconciliation etc.,

Mention some of the awards, achievements, recognitions and clients' feedback that you feel are notable and valuable for the company.  

The best way to measure your effort is through your feedback, and we have been getting good numbers there. So here are some awards and testimonials I would like to mention.

G2 reviewers recently announced Avalara as a leader in the grid report. Our sales tax compliance technology got a high rating across multiple categories. Some claim that Avalara helped them save time, and some say that we are probably the best choice if they are selling to multiple states.

Avalara stands 28th in the top 250 best-led companies of 2021 as per the recent announcements by INC, where they looked up the middle market to find the top 250 companies that excel in management.

We were also named a leader in three IDC MarketScape reports this year. IDC MarketScape reports are guidance tools for businesses that plan to digitise their tax compliance processes. The reports highlight an increase in the business need for a tax automation solution to mitigate new compliance risks resulting from the growing global digital economy, new and changing legislative complexity across the globe, and enhanced indirect tax enforcement tactics.

We also won the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favourite Companies in the Financial Services Sector.

These recognitions keep motivating us to continue learning tax like the back of our hands so that our clients wouldn't have to learn them.

What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors? 

While there are many things that we are proud of, our main USP is our integrations. Our partnership with a number of esteemed organisations, from billing, ERP, CRM, invoicing, POS and eCommerce, and marketplace platforms help us provide an all-in-one solution to cover all the business needs of the end-users in one place. Currently, our score is 1000+ signed partner integrations. With a significant number of integrations, our software becomes easy to plugin and make your transition to digital compliance effortless.

How is IoT/big data/AI/robotics evolving today in the industry as a whole? What are the most important trends that you see emerging across the globe? 

Some of the up-and-coming trends include AIoT, which increased the dependency on cloud computing, augmented workforces, etc. and these trends are likely to change the way business functions operate.

AI/ML technology is widely used in fields of knowledge such as risk and compliance to comb through large amounts of data and find the correct information for specific tasks.

Hyper Automation is gaining prominence as more and more industry verticals are starting to implement robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent business process management software (iBPMS) to deal with repetitive tasks that involve large volumes of data and information.

These upcoming innovations have disruptive potential and can transform business functions by helping them increase dependency on machines, drastically reduce, if not, eliminate the scope for human error and further help the development of equally innovative support services.

What are the key challenges you are facing in the market? What are the current trends? 

Several countries, including India, have either proposed or enacted unilateral digital service taxes, targeting various digital activities and services, including digital advertising. This leads to an increased need for tax reporting and keeping up with compliance requirements. Businesses who weren't considering the digital transformation of tax functions now want to get there with yesterday's deadline. Essentially, companies are actively investing in tax technology tools. The challenge here is that they might not cover all grounds without a well-rounded strategy and might keep switching between software and SaaS services before reaching stability. Before conducting a digital transformation exercise, businesses need to consider several factors, including their technology requirements, possible compliance changes in the economy where they are operating, the possibility of scaling, etc.

Although it is highly unusual for the tax to decide whether or not a transaction happens, tax uncertainty can influence a business's transactions. The last two years have seen a paradigm shift in the way companies operate. Even though businesses faced lockdowns and logistics took a hit, there has been an e-commerce boom of sorts, leading to further compliance liabilities, both domestic and international. In addition, with overseas trading becoming an excellent opportunity for global scaling, businesses need to consider the differing tax liabilities associated with transactions in different jurisdictions. As a result, companies are looking into software services that can help them keep track of global tax content.

AI is projected to be the next market. How is AI contributing to the making of your products and services?    

Right. AI is the next market. In fact, AI-backed software is likely to lead business functions in the near future. It could even lead to revisiting and revising current operational processes – especially those processes that are manual in nature and have a higher risk of human error. In addition, AI is contributing to the creation of the augmented workforce. In a report by Goldman Sachs, it was predicted that virtual and augmented reality will be a US$80 billion+ dollar industry by 2025. We can see how manual and repetitive tasks that can be easily replicated using AI software are replacing business functions like tax and compliance.

AI contributes to advances in natural language processing and language modelling, allowing machines to better process and decode human communication. NLP is currently one of the most used AI technologies that considerably reduces the necessity for typing or interacting with a screen. This is possible as machines are trained to comprehend human languages. We are trying to harness the power of NLP to develop better, more intuitive software that can help anticipate risk and reduce impact.

AI and machine learning form a big part in detecting patterns by studying historical data – our software can comb through mountains of data and find ways and share actionable insights with their users. This allows businesses to improve their strategies and be better prepared to comply with dynamic compliance requirements worldwide.