Top 3 Pros/Cons for Tax Pros Using Workflow or Project Management Tools

Posted by Kelley Lear on Mar 27, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Innovation, Leadership, Process Improvement, Software, Tax Planning | 0 comments

Top 3 Pros/Cons for Tax Pros Using Workflow or Project Management Tools

Are you a tax professional that has each and every tax planning, compliance and audit cycle managed with full automation, documentation and controls?  Do you have step by step processes, dependencies and email reminder notifications?  Do you have complete transparency to every process so that you can see who is doing what, when, and what status your various cycles are? Or are you like most tax departments out there struggling with emails, Excel checklists and spreadsheets tracking dates, payments, data requests, information document requests (IDRs), notice of proposed adjustments (NPAs) and revenue agent reports (RARs)?

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Here’s a Quick Way to Reduce E-mail in the Tax Department

Posted by Traci Wheeler on Mar 22, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Leadership, March, Process Improvement, Tax | 0 comments

Here’s a Quick Way to Reduce E-mail in the Tax Department

With more and more work and less resources to get it done, what tax professional doesn’t want to reduce the amount of work they have to do in the tax department? Wouldn’t it be nice if, as a long day at the office was coming to an end, you didn’t have to still weed through your e-mail inbox trying to figure out which e-mails were the really important ones and which ones could just be filed away or deleted?

A while back, I read a Fast Company article in which they displayed the below infographic created by Online IT Degree. Distribute this decision tree in your tax department, have everyone refer to this prior to sending e-mails and see what happens.

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Are You Listening to Me?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Mar 20, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Leadership, Process Improvement | 0 comments

Are You Listening to Me?

How many times do you find yourself in a conversation with someone and you just know they are not listening to you?  You know they are looking at you with anticipation, faux interest, and simply waiting for a brief pause so they can start in on their next sentence?  Or even better yet, you can’t even finish your sentence or train of thought because they have already jumped in to tell you a similar story about themselves?  By the time the story gets back around to you, you probably don’t even have the energy to complete your thought.  How do you feel when that happens to you?  Do you want to continue to engage that person or do you feel like just walking away?

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“Chief Innovation Officers” in 2012?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 28, 2012 in Finance, Innovation, IT, Leadership, Process Improvement, Tax | 0 comments

“Chief Innovation Officers” in 2012?

The New Year brings with it new surveys and predictions of key economic indicators and C-Level employees who are making decisions that affect us all every day.  Last year, I wrote two posts related to CFO and CIO priorities for 2011.  I hope you read them and they helped you in creating your business cases, negotiating positions, projects and strategic initiatives for tax with your IT and Finance teams within your organization.  Don’t forget that CIO’s may control approximately $321 billion of the spending within our organizations.  I continue to feel strongly that knowing what key individuals within your organization care about, are thinking about, and what keeps them up at night, will help you to better maneuver within your corporate framework. 

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Your Survey Says “WHAT?!”

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 7, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Innovation, Process Improvement, Tax | 6 comments

Your Survey Says “WHAT?!”

I just recently shared a post called “Going Undercover – Do you Really Need To?”.   The gist of the article touched on the fact that you shouldn’t need to ‘go undercover” like the CEO’s in “Undercover Boss” on CBS’s popular television show.  You should be able to employ some simple techniques and tools to be able to keep your pulse on what is going on your team, in your department or within your organization.  If you are a tax professional within an organization, it is easy to get caught up in the daily grind of tax compliance cycles, tax and regulatory updates, and audits.  Often times, we know that we should be able to make marked improvements in our processes, however we rarely have the time to dedicate to this effort.  Further, we may not know what key areas we should focus on, and are not exactly sure where and how to get started.

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Going Undercover? Do you Really Need To?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Jan 31, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Innovation, Process Improvement | 2 comments

Going Undercover? Do you Really Need To?

How many of you have watched “Undercover Boss” on CBS?  There has been a lot of press on this show lately.  I can’t seem to turn on the T.V. without seeing sound bytes attempting to draw more viewers into the drama.  I mean who wouldn’t like to see their boss have to try doing their job for a day?  I confess that I actually caught one of the earlier episodes of the program and was mildly interested (if not fairly amused), to see what one CEO experienced on a day of hard labor, interacting with his regular employees and gaining insight on what was going on within his company.  Although positioned to depict hopefulness and change, I actually find this premise sad in way.

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