Retail Income Tax Preparation Firm

Our client is a retail income tax preparation firm serving the United States and Canada. The company focuses on computerized income tax preparation, electronic filing and refund loans, with emphasis on customer service including audit assistance, a money-back guarantee and free tax return checking.

Client:	Retail Income Tax Preparation Firm
Technology:	MS SharePoint Portal Server 2003 MS BizTalk Server 2004 MS SQL Cluster Server 2000 MS Windows 2003 ASP .NET
Industry:	Retail & Distribution
Service:	Service-Oriented Architecture

The Challenge

This client engaged Ironworks Consulting to deploy and configure a business portal and business process automation solution to replace and enhance an existing Intranet site and solutions that were used for managing and filing customer tax records. They needed their Intranet to serve as a collaborative tool for the corporation and over 2000 franchisees. Additionally, the client wanted their end users to be able to conduct financial transactions through the portal which meant the information had to be accurate and refreshed frequently.

While there were several technical challenges involved with this initiative, the largest issue was assisting the client with developing a deployment and transition model. Each of the franchise locations would be required to convert their operations to the new model.

The Solution

Ironworks Consulting provided the following solutions and deliverables:

Conducted a pilot to confirm that BizTalk Server would support Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) of our client’s systems
Implemented and configured BizTalk Server 2004; it will be used as the primary messaging and orchestration platform for processing tax returns through their system
Deployed and configured SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Recommended and implemented an information architecture that greatly simplified information access and streamlined office and franchise management tasks
Designed a web services based messaging implementation to replace an ftp and email based franchise based office system
Implemented BAM to provide real time monitoring of tax return processing
Developed a managed workflow for content approval
Implemented a content management system that enables “editors” to update the site’s content via a web interface
Developed a new Site Map based on information architecture design sessions conducted with corporate and franchise business users to ensure easy access to information
Created home page synopsis of financial & performance data with custom views by login
Created robust reporting capabilities
Helped enhance development processes; improve deployment stability; reduce deployment time; enhance testing tools & environments; and conduct a 1500 site pilot

The Results

As a result of this engagement:

Our client has obtained a reliable, scalable business portal and process automation solution that supports the current business base and projected business growth. The environment scales to handle more the 10 M e-File tax returns from January to April 15
Resources have been freed up from many of the content management tasks
National support personnel receive fewer requests for assistance from franchisees
Our client can dynamically communicate information to franchisees via announcements, message boards, document libraries, and downloads
More accurate information is being delivered to and utilized by the franchisees
Corporate can centrally review content publication submissions from the franchisee as well as search archives of documents and published information
The franchisee paper-based approval process was reduced from average of 30 to 3 days

View Case Study Listings