From Implementation to Impact: Maximizing the Value of Tax Software
In this article, you’ll learn:
- Why software implementations often fail to deliver full value
- How integrated tax workflows reduce manual effort and risk
- What certified implementation expertise adds beyond software deployment
- How RSM helps organizations prepare for future regulatory change
- Ways to maximize ROI from Bloomberg Tax over time
Corporate tax departments face a compounding set of demands. Regulatory changes seem to arrive faster than internal processes can absorb them, data needs to flow across systems that weren’t designed to communicate with one another, and leaders expect accuracy and efficiency from teams that are already stretched thin.
An integrated suite of tax tools can ease the pressure. However, the extent to which an organization benefits from the tools depends largely on how it deploys and configures the technology and how well it maintains it over time.
RSM US LLP is a member of the Certified Implementation Program for the Bloomberg Tax suite of solutions, including Fixed Assets, Provision, Research, and Workpapers. They’re not simply familiar with the products. They use them every day across a broad client base.
Here’s what that combination of technology and a sophisticated tax advisor delivers in practice, and why the implementation decision warrants as much deliberation as the software selection itself.
The case for an integrated suite
Tax departments typically don’t lack software. They lack connectivity.
Team members extract trial balances from an ERP system, maintain depreciation schedules and provision calculations in Excel, and conduct research on multiple platforms.
Every handoff creates another opportunity for delay, inconsistency, or error. For example, a late change to a journal entry may require manual rework across multiple steps if those steps aren’t connected.
Bloomberg Tax addresses these challenges by connecting Research, Workpapers, Fixed Assets, and Provision within a single ecosystem.
Suite of solutions benefits at a glance
How the workflow connects
Research → Workpapers → Fixed Assets → Provision → Reporting & Disclosures
For example, the M-1 adjustment for can be streamlined by cleansing asset transaction data in Workpapers, calculating depreciation in Fixed Assets, and returning the results to Workpapers to feed directly into Provision.
In an asset-intensive business, that workflow could otherwise be the most time-consuming reconciliation in the entire provision process.
Key takeaway: Benefits of integrated tax technology
An integrated workflow doesn’t simply make existing tasks faster. It reduces the need for manual coordination altogether.
The benefits extend beyond compliance. When tax data is structured consistently across connected systems, organizations can model the tax implications of acquisitions, restructurings, and other planning scenarios without rebuilding assumptions in separate spreadsheets.
However, realizing those benefits starts with a disciplined implementation.
What certified implementation expertise delivers
Many software implementations follow a familiar pattern. The project reaches a point of functional adequacy and stops there. The system processes the prior-year provision, the data flows in, and the team meets the immediate deliverable.
Yet the internal team often lacks the cross-client perspective to fully appreciate what’s possible. As a result, the configuration work required to unlock the platform’s deeper capabilities is frequently delayed or never prioritized.
Implementation as process transformation
RSM frames implementation as a transformation initiative rather than a software installation.
Installation focuses on placing data into a system and verifying the output.
RSM’s transformation approach examines the entire workflow, including the systems involved, the people responsible at each stage, the controls that govern data movement, and the points at which the process is most vulnerable to error or delay.
Then they design the technology deployment around those findings.
RSM’s implementation framework
The first step is to map the current process.
Through a whiteboarding session with the client’s tax leadership, they document where data originates, which parties are responsible for it at each stage, and what happens when something changes.
The process-mapping exercise can also uncover control gaps and operational risks that technology alone cannot solve. Even organizations that aren’t subject to SOX internal control requirements benefit from structured controls over their provision workflow.
For example, the question of how the tax team receives notification when accounting posts a late journal entry may have a technological answer or a procedural one.
Without answers to those kinds of questions, even the best technology can be undermined by process breakdowns.
Managing the risk of incomplete implementation
Getting a system live is not the same as getting full value from it.
According to industry estimates, roughly 80% of features in the average accounting software product are rarely or never used. Once the system is running and filings get done, implementation resources are redeployed and configuration work is often postponed indefinitely.
The challenge is that postponed configuration work rarely creates immediate problems. The consequences typically emerge months or years later when business conditions change. A subsequent acquisition might render the configuration inadequate, and the team that performed the original implementation has moved on.
Common areas left unfinished
Organizations frequently postpone:
- Entity-level state modeling
- Workpaper linkages aren’t fully built out
- AI-enabled data structures
- Reporting enhancements for future disclosure requirements
Why implementation doesn’t end at go-live
RSM addresses these issues directly. They approach implementation as the beginning of a lasting relationship rather than a one-time project.
That way, the team is positioned to identify when a business change – such as a new ERP, an M&A transaction, or international expansion – has implications for the technology.
Key takeaway: Strategic implementation is essential for tax workflow transformation
Tax technology should evolve alongside the business. Ongoing optimization helps prevent today’s implementation decisions from becoming tomorrow’s constraints.
Regulatory change and the value of ongoing advisory support
Tax departments are operating in an environment of constant change.
New regulations, evolving disclosure requirements, and shifting state tax rules require organizations to continuously evaluate not only their tax positions but also the systems and processes that support them.
Complying with ASU 2023-09
ASU 2023-09 significantly expanded income tax disclosure requirements, and it illustrates the value of combining technical tax expertise with technology capabilities.
Bloomberg Tax incorporated ASU 2023-09 functionality into its provision platform. RSM participated in the pilot process, evaluating whether the system’s outputs aligned with the standard’s requirements across different client configurations.
A combination of software development and practitioner testing produced a solution that not only technically compliant, but operationally sound.
Managing ASU 2023-09 adoption in Excel or in a provision tool that had not yet addressed the standard required manual quantification of the expanded disclosures without systematic support.
The difference in effort and risk of error is material. Structured data in a compliant system reduces the likelihood that disclosure errors carry over into the final filing.
Staying ahead of future changes
The same principle applies to regulatory changes.
Bloomberg Tax maintains and updates its underlying tax technical database. RSM helps operationalize the technical updates by reviewing clients’ system configurations reflect technical updates as well as operational adjustments to workpaper structure, data inputs, and review procedures.
A software update that modifies the mechanics of a calculation may produce correct results in some configurations and incorrect results in others, depending on the structure of the data.
Identifying which situation applies to a specific client requires a combination of system knowledge and ASC 740 expertise that the Certified Implementation Program provides.
Optimizing the investment over time
The benefits of investing in Bloomberg Tax’s integrated suite continue to increase over time as teams adopt the system and organizational needs evolve.
With a properly configured and optimized environment, tax teams can:
- Reduce manual reconciliation
- Mitigate errors with automated data flows
- Improve audit defensibility with documented controls
- Increase confidence in calculations
- Enable more effective tax planning
- Scale operations without proportional increases in headcount
Two advantages internal teams can’t easily replicate
RSM’s approach to ongoing optimization draws on two unique sources of intelligence:
- Cross-client pattern recognition
Having implemented and operated the Bloomberg Tax suite across a large and diverse client portfolio, RSM’s professionals observe how different configurations perform under different circumstances. They know which approaches scale effectively as organizations grow and which create friction when facts change.
- Direct participation in Bloomberg Tax’s product development process
This allows RSM visibility into forthcoming platform capabilities and prepare clients for adoption in advance, helping clients to be more proactive.
That continuity is the defining characteristic of the Certified Implementer Program engagement model.
The technology decision and the service relationship are both part of a single strategy for building a tax department that can operate efficiently, scale with the business, and adapt to a regulatory environment that will continue to evolve.
Key takeaway: Maximize return on your tax technology investment with strong implementation support
Long-term value comes from continuous improvement. The organizations that realize the greatest return from tax technology are those that actively evolve their processes alongside the platform.
Closing the gap between capability and realized value
For complex tax departments, there is often a meaningful gap between software capability and what the organization will actually achieve with it.
Closing that gap requires more than technology. It requires implementation expertise, process knowledge, and ongoing support.
RSM bridges that gap with a combination that is structurally difficult to replicate:
- Active daily use of Bloomberg Tax across a large and diverse client base
- Deep ASC 740 and multi-jurisdictional technical expertise
- Cross-functional engagement teams
- An ongoing advisory relationship that continues through the business changes that inevitably follow any technology deployment
Key takeaway: Achieve better tax outcomes through technology and expertise
The most successful tax technology initiatives don’t focus solely on implementation. They focus on transformation.
By combining Bloomberg Tax’s integrated suite with RSM’s implementation and advisory expertise, organizations can build a tax function that operates more efficiently today while remaining prepared for whatever changes come next.
If you’re ready to evaluate what a properly configured Bloomberg Tax suite could deliver, request a demo.
Drive greater efficiency and accuracy in your tax provision process with RSM. The certified implementation team can help you implement, and optimize the right software aligned to ASC 740. Learn more.