Launching an Independent Company with Help from inQdo Cloud
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 Cloud is responsive to our needs. Their teams listen to our requirements, and we discover the best solution together. It’s a great relationship.’
Marc van Rijbroek, Chief Executive Officer at Taxmarc
Quick, Successful Migration to SAP on AWS Cuts Costs by 40%
Van Rijbroek reached out to AWS Partner inQdo Cloud, which he’d worked with at PwC. inQdo Cloud 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 Cloud. “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 Cloud 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 Cloud 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 Cloud 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.’
Peter Perebooms, Founder of inQdo Cloud
Innovating for a Future of Growth with inQdo Cloud and Using AWS
The Taxmarc team can now innovate and develop new capabilities that support growth. For instance, to expand its customer base beyond SAP users, Taxmarc needs to work with other ERP systems. Working with inQdo Cloud, Taxmarc created an application programming interface (API) that gathers data from any system to calculate indirect tax obligations. The two companies launched the new feature after 2 weeks of collaborative work using Amazon API Gateway, which allows developers to create, maintain, and secure APIs. Being able to integrate with any platform means Taxmarc appeals to more small and mid-sized companies, along with large enterprises.
Demand for Taxmarc is growing as governments become stricter about enforcing tax law. Working with inQdo Cloud, Taxmarc can easily scale up resources to accommodate this higher demand, using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure and resizable compute capacity. It can now quickly allocate additional Amazon EC2 instances when it needs to process large amounts of customer data, which can reach 10 million records in one batch. “Our aim is to simplify the cloud,” says Perebooms. “We use AWS and cloud infrastructure to make it easy for Taxmarc to achieve its goals.”
Taxmarc has great expectations for the future, including building a cloud-native version of its tax engine and launching data analysis and tax auditing services. inQdo Cloud continues to support the company by managing infrastructure and providing engineering expertise for new features and products. “When I first considered leaving PwC, I thought it might be too difficult to move Taxmarc to the cloud quickly while keeping everything working smoothly for our clients,” says van Rijbroek. “But we achieved that and more by finding the right partner and problem-solving together.”
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