Podcast transcript: How a holistic approach elevated Dow’s tax function

Susannah Streeter  

This is the EY podcast Tax and Law In Focus, bringing you ideas for leadership. I'm your host Susannah Streeter. In this podcast, we're going to focus on how the tax function can be made smarter by honing in on one particular example. Four years ago, Dow Chemical company's tax function was facing a tidal wave of challenges. It was engaged in major M&A activity, it was scrambling to keep up with a fast-moving operating environment. And at the same time, the company was faced with the increasing sophistication of the tax authorities who were demanding ever greater transparency and real-time access to digital tax data. Working out why decisions were made was so complex that the tax function was dubbed a black box by executives. It needed radical transformation to become a true strategic partner to the business. Now, this wasn't just to meet compliance requirements, but also to add value to everything from investment decisions to competitive analysis. Well, fast forward four years and that metamorphosis has been completed. But just how was it achieved? Well, that's what we're going to unpick in this podcast with the help of the team who made it happen. But before we do, please remember, conversations during this podcast should not be relied upon as accounting, tax, legal, investment, nor other professional advice. Listeners must, of course, consult their own advisors. Well, let me now introduce Marcelo Vieira, Dow's director of tax strategy and global tax operations. Hello, Marcelo. 

Marcelo Vieira  

Hello, how are you doing? 

Streeter  

Very well. Great to have you on the podcast, and also very pleased that you're going to be chatting with Andrea Gronenthal, who's EY Americas Strategic Tax Transformation Leader. Welcome, Andrea.

Andrea Gronenthal  

Well, thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Streeter  

Great to have you. And, Marcelo, let me start with you. Because I'm really intrigued by the black box description of the tax function. Just how complex was it?

Vieira  

That's a good question. Because talk about the black box. It's basically the ability to translate tax to the business, right? The business knows how to do business, how to serve our customers, how to prepare for the inventory, crisis, logistics, etc. But not necessarily has clarity about how complex it is to operate in a very regulated tax environment in many countries. Dow operates in more than 100 countries, and at the time we had more than 800 legal entities in our corporate structure and were constantly being challenged by the tax authorities, changing rules, and requiring different business models or supply chain taxations. And this was impacting directly the business and tax coming in. You cannot do it this way anymore. You have to change it to another way. And the business was not understanding. So one of the points of the black box is the ability to translate tax to the business. And the other is not having the business surprised by a tax assessment, or in a worst-case scenario, the name of the company on the front page of a newspaper, right? So that was the black box when the business didn't understand.

Streeter  

Let me bring in Andrea. Since 2018, EY has been working with Dow on this subject, on this project. Tell me about the first deep dive, which really brought the problems into sharp relief. What were your first impressions, Andrea, about what needed to change to create an intelligent tax function? And what does that mean in practice?

Gronenthal  

At the time Dow was going through a significant transaction, and there was just a tremendous amount of complex tax issues to deal with. We were brought in to take a look at the tax organization and really figure out how to make sure they both successfully navigated the transaction. But also were set up post-transaction in the most effective way. And so one very interesting thing is we came in and did a voice of the customer series of surveys with all the major stakeholders involved. And what was very clear as a result of the surveys was that there was a disconnect on what were the perceived priorities and how the tax was oriented and structured to align with those priorities. Once we were able to zero in on that, it led to a full restructure of the organization really under the premise that what needed to be done as a strategic business partner was that they were going to have to fundamentally change the organization itself to make an intelligent tax function. And really when you say what is an intelligent or smart tax function? It's aligned with the strategic priorities and is an effective steward of risk that gets compliance done and the other routine activities done most efficiently and effectively.

Streeter  

It really does sound as though you grasped pretty straight away what you needed to do. And at the same time, Marcelo, what kind of disrupted forces were there, both internally and externally that made this so urgent from your side?

Vieira  

Andrea touched on some of those points. The major M&A transaction that we were doing at the time. Combining two entities and splitting into three public independent companies, with the requirements of a huge carve out of data, huge processes, and valuations globally. Understanding the people who will stay, and who would move to those new organizations. This was a key factor. In addition, we were looking also for the future. How we will be ready after this major transaction to operate efficiently? The portfolio of Dow changed and the countries that we were operating in were changing as well. So we needed to be ahead of the game when we started this journey. Also assertive tax authorities requiring more and more data in real-time. That was a challenge for the companies that should be ready to support those demands. And finally, tax transparency is something that is on the agenda of all companies right now. ESG, environmental, social, and governance is something on the BEPS initiatives. Every country has their shape of how they will be served by tax transparency.

Streeter  

Andrea, let's drill down into what Marcelo was talking about there. Some of it, at least the demand from the tax authorities for real-time access to digital tax data. What needs to change at the heart of the function to enable that?

Gronenthal  

So much stuff that is occurring around the world, with tax reform, ESG, digital tax, and just every country trying to build their tax base in response to the COVID crisis and the fiscal crisis associated with that. There were just so many different jurisdictions and different tax types that are moving toward more of a digital tax administration and approach to taxation. And so at the heart of it, you have to put together a data management strategy, and you need to get a mastery of the data around the globe. And so for Dow, in this case, we had to not only figure out how to capture that data, aggregate that data and analyze that data, but we also had to create processes that didn't exist at the time. And we needed to build up the competencies within the organization to manage the tax responsibilities in a much more agile fashion, and with a much stronger data and technology orientation. And so when you really look at it, it was a fundamental change across people, process, data and technology.

Streeter  

So do you think Marcelo, that the tax function perhaps was too separated from the strategic direction of the business for the C-suite to fully understand the changes that needed to be made?

Vieira  

It's always a challenge, right? When you are so focused on the day-to-day and not necessarily communicating with the C-suite, the strategy of the company from a tax perspective, right, the priorities of the companies currently change and the tax environment is also very disruptive and changes everyday. One of the major challenges and is to always keep the C-suite and the business updated of the tax department strategy. So we are together sitting at the table and understanding if we are growing and where we are growing and why the business wants to go in a direction. Tax will not say no the business here, that we have a concept where the business is the pilot. But finance is the co-pilot and tax is part of the pilot so we know how to operate, we know how to navigate the airplane. I think for a while we were very isolated, doing our tax planning, our tax strategy, tax compliance without the proper communication.

Streeter  

Had there been a bit of tinkering around the edges in a way, trying out an incremental approach before you realized you needed a change in strategy?

Vieira  

Yes, the point here, Susannah, is when we think about this project, and everyone and I've been speaking with other companies as well, and partners with EY and others about the project. For sure we have a well-designed project with a deadline and deliverables and expectations. So a payback to the business. We're not investing in tax if we don't have a payback from risk mitigation, compliance, re-structure and many other aspects of the project. But this is not a short-term project. Now we've created a foundation. But this was always a long-term project a long-term journey because the world is changing. When we have a crisis in Europe, and the price of energy now goes up it changes the entire economic landscape, and consequently, the tax landscape as well. Supply chain change, we needed to change and adapt to this from the tax side, the transfer pricing rules, where we are moving our inventory. So it's complex to navigate. So yes we are always changing the strategy, it's a long-term strategy, our long-term journey here.

Streeter  

So Andrea, you realized that a bigger vision was needed to elevate the tax function, I suppose from above just managing compliance. So how did you go about achieving that?

Gronenthal  

Well, one of the first things we did was sit down with a variety of key stakeholders and customers, and we reoriented how they look at tax. And we also worked with the tax team to think differently about what their responsibilities were and how to execute on those. So we focused on three critical areas: value creation, risk management, and cost-effectiveness. And when we brought the desires and expectations of senior leadership and the business, together with the tax leadership, and where they thought the priorities were, once we got those aligned, it really became very clear what that journey needed to look like. And so the whole focus, you know, as Marcelo said, this was going to be a journey, we had put together a multi-year transformation program that really helped them not only address some of the immediate needs related to the transaction but also, as we discussed earlier, focus on positioning them to be able to manage effectively in the future. And so it really necessitated at that future back orientation, and understanding all the different possible disruptors, of which there is an endless number and understand. We're not going to know all of these things in the crystal ball, if you will. We are going to be able to tell what capabilities you will need to have to be able to address those things as they come along. And with the pace of change, that really meant we had to focus on building out an enablement platform and capabilities that would give the organization the agility to adapt to change. And so as Marcelo said we went on this journey, and we put in some of the capabilities, and we were constantly recalibrating. So if you look at what's happened over the last four years, in the Dow tax organization, they've built all these tremendous capabilities. And now they can look into the future. We've got things that are disruptors, like the energy crisis in Europe, they're able to adapt, and because they have these capabilities, they're able to work very closely with the business and senior leadership, to then reorient and continue to adjust how they are doing today's work, but also continuing to build upon those capabilities as things continue to shift as they move forward into the future.

Streeter  

And of course, Marcelo, you had to gain buy-in from your company's executive leadership. And given that we've already talked about how the tax function had kind of been isolated from the C-suite, how did you do that? And how key was this?

Vieira  

When we unveiled this black box, and we're sitting around the table and of course Dow tax is competing with projects in money, investment, from the IT organization, with the business as well. And in the past tax function was always in a second or the third tier. That CAPEX and investment from technology because we want to go make sure the business, the treasury, and other functions have their tools to operate as well. And what I can see here is because we unveil this black box, the business understands the value of the tax, the business understands that when we don't comply properly, with the craziness of that particular country that requests the color or the license plate of the truck that is transporting our products and if you don't do that, we receive a penalty, and that penalty will eat part of the profits of the business. It's a whole ballpark net gain in this discussion. So now the business understands much more the importance of being in compliance, they always understood, but now the current tax environment, the business understands the value when tax is advising, you know, which the best way to deliver and to move things from A to B, for several tax aspects. And the business also understands the overall value proposition of the strategy, so with that, we have a business by our side, supporting the large majority of our projects today. And I think you're talking a little bit about what Andrea talked about, those enablers, Susannah, as well. And she touched on critical points here in terms of the data. And in terms of the structure and everything that we needed to have to operate efficiently. It's interesting here at the beginning of this journey, especially from the data and technology piece, we ran surveys, and we tracked the efficiency of our team. And that was something that the EY had on the shelf as a result of their previous surveys. But we added the same methodology to identify how much time the tax department was consumed by each process, and then around 60 to 70% of our time, was to manipulate the data, and 30% to do the planning, advisory, etc. So 70% of our time globally was extracting data, massaging the data, putting the data in the right format to give to the tax authorities. Only 30%, for planning, advising, and strategic thinking. Now we've pivoted this completely to be in a 30-40% data massage. And 60% is strategic and that was the big piece of the transformation, the results that came along with this project. 

Streeter  

So to do that, to get that efficiency and effectiveness, and really push it to a whole new level. Andrea what kind of processes and technology really was needed? 

Gronenthal  

Well, at the heart, as I mentioned, the data management strategy, in the instance of Dow, we put together a core, at the center was a data hub that brought in all the information that tax needed, and made it fit for purpose. And that was critical, and foundational to creating those savings that Marcelo has referenced. Secondly, they needed to have a way to manage the processes all around the globe. And so another big piece of the technology was putting in a process management solution, or, you know, a global tax portal. And so that was another piece that was pretty critical to make sure that they were able to get that transparency and consistency across the globe. And then once we had those pieces of technology, we were able to anchor it with Intelligent Automation, RPA, you know, machine learning, and some of the other key compliance-related technology. So we created an entire enabling technology ecosystem, that sits at the heart of how Dow has been able to become much more relevant. So as Marcelo was talking about at Dow, the tax organization being third or fourth tier in the business decisions. What was key to be relevant with the business as they're going through their changes is being able to be very quick. And in many cases, nowadays, proactive and analyzing the information and bringing insight to the business. Historically, if it had taken the tax organization, you know, six weeks to compile the information to be able to come back with a recommendation, that's not fast enough for the pace of change in the business. And now because of the enablement platform that the tax organization works from they are able to be very responsive to what's happening in the business and what's happening externally. And so as a result, they have made themselves far more relevant, which gave them access to a seat at the table. It was a data transformation that really allowed them to get to that spot.

Streeter  

And of course, Marcelo, you also had to decide what should be outsourced and what should be kept in-house. And that must have been pretty tricky. So how were those decisions made?

Vieira  

That's a great question. Because when we're talking about outsourcing, outsourcing is something that is very particular for, I would say, every company, every tax department, every chief tax officer, CFO. Some of them truly believe in the power of their outsources, some of them question the benefits and the costs associated with outsourcing. So to share a little bit of our journey we decided to do some of them. We are always assessing the results and the decision. But basically, it was a combination of analyzing the people and the human elements, that at the time, and when we decide to do we have the right key people to perform this work strategically. Also, we analyzed based on some of the repetitive activities. Our team was not using necessarily their time for the strategic tax analysis and projects. So all of this was part of this strategy. Today, Susannah outsourcing is one of the models. We have outsourcing, we have co-sourcing, we have functional outsourcing, when you go even beyond — you outsource the entire tax function. So what we decided here in Dow is for some of the pieces, we want to have some control, we cosource part of the process. So we do part and the cosource does the other part. We are very integrated with our partner. For our other process, we did a regular outsource. I don't want to fill 1,000 forms because you I have my employee that will give much more value for the organization. Helping me with audits or helping me with tax planning. We could not increase the number of people for budget constraints. We decided to outsource pieces and keep our talents and refocus them to strategic areas.

Streeter  

Andrea, would you agree with that approach from Marcelo?

Gronenthal  

Yeah, absolutely. So there were two things that we really looked at, well, actually, probably three. So first, we worked with the tax organization, to determine what they felt were going to be the strategic priorities of the tax organization, then we looked at what the capabilities were, and for example, how much investment they would have to do to migrate to additional capabilities. And so when we looked at it, we said, 'Okay if it's something strategic, you want to be best in class, and that's where you want to put your transformation investment.' And if it's something that's not as strategic or requires a lot of time to accomplish, or you've had a great deal of deferred investment we want to try and do our best in costs and leverage a business partner to take that in any of the forums, as Marcelo mentioned, whether it was co-source, outsource or functionally outsourcing. One of the great examples Marcelo was, you guys had your direct tax compliance on Corp tax. You guys had been using Corp tax for years, and there was a fair amount of work that would have had to have been done to get that upgraded where you needed it to be. And what we did instead was we said, okay, now's the time to consider moving to a different product and worked with a business partner who could take the process, transform it, and also help train their people so that if they wanted to bring it back in-house, they could and it would have been a completely different technology and all of their people would have been trained on it in a less disruptive way.

Vieira  

I agree and it's such a good point when we think about co-sourcing, outsourcing and each operating model. Another thing that we analyzed Susannah, in our journey, is how and when it makes sense we have to have a mature organization when we take these decisions, especially in a company the size of Dow. If you're a small company and just outsource because you have two people, this is an easy decision. But when we're talking about outsourcing, that you don't have, you still don't have like a mature process to handover to the outsourcing you are setting yourself up for failure, you know. So everything that we decided here, and now with EY and the partners that we use we put in a very robust process. We make sure we have the data to send it to the co-sourcing or outsourcing partner so they can operate efficiently. We have the KPIs. So it was a very thoughtful process. It was just not an easy process, let's outsource. It took years for us to figure out so all our current outsources have been very successful.

Streeter  

And something that we've not touched on yet is to what extent this whole transformation was also to do with the fight for talent among tax professionals. Marcelo, how much of a challenge is that?

Vieira  

That's also a great point. Because despite the fact I've seen a boom of tax professionals recently, you see tax on the agenda and in the universities or in the workplace, but the equation of demand and offer now is not solved yet. So that comes back to the outsourcing piece as well, some of the things that we decided to outsource were because we could not find the talent profile where we are located. And we have several issues with our locations. One of our tax operations teams is located in Brazil, in Sao Paulo, where we have a fight for tax professionals, because we have a lot of headquarters, a lot of companies always searching and seeking for tax managers, indirect tax managers. We fight against other companies. And we have tax operations centers that are located in a more remote area. So our challenge is to attract people to decide to move to Midwest and retain those people in here. So the talent for sure is one of the critical aspects, that was a key component in the overall strategy. Make sure we retain the team. Now is a little bit different, after COVID because in the past we were physically present in the office. Now we have more ability to work remotely. But remote also brings out the challenges in terms of cultural adaptations, so people are still the hard part of this overall equation.

Streeter  

And as you say, it's a global challenge. And Andrea, talking about the global challenge, you have to also make sure that you've got full sight of the evolving risk picture right around the world as well, don't you?

Gronenthal  

You definitely do and more so in today's environment than ever with all of the initiatives around the globe, whether it's BEPS, or transparency measures or compliance assurance programs. It really necessitates that you can see all of the tax activities of the organization and make sure that they're being properly managed and your positions are consistent. And as ever on a project like this, we are continuously evaluating the global picture.

Streeter  

So Marcelo, Andrea's saying you've got this global holistic approach, but how do you also ensure that you have your eyes firmly on the ground and that the function can still get to grips with the granular data?

Vieira  

Yes that is part of this entire data strategy and data management team. When we started this journey with EY and mapping our future needs we had three or four or five people globally dedicated to the data management and technology. Now our current portfolio of people and also tax professionals we have more than 25 people only dedicated to data management and technology to have that granularity that we discussed in the past. So using a lot of new ETLs to extract, transform, and lift the information, they're powered by our data hub, data lake data pool. We have a stack that we use to streamline our processes. And discovering new technologies every day. So we schedule things. Now in the past, we were pulling those huge reports and taking like an hour to two hours. Now we set up all those reports to run overnight. So we have the reports ready in India or ready in Brazil or here at the time that we set up. So we don't have our team spending time on this. And they are spending time on different aspects of the data. 

Streeter  

And what other impacts, from your point of view Marcelo, has this global tax platform had?

Vieira  

It's huge, right? When we think how we operate in the past and how we operate today, it's a kind of water and wine. I prefer wine and I know that people prefer water. But in one example, Susannah, when we started this, for instance, we were in the first quarter of COVID, when we needed to release the entire tax organization and go to your home, bring your computer, but we have weekly, daily tax obligations and filings and payments. How are we going to control this if we don't have those systems and if you don't know what the people are doing in our global department? Then we have more than 200 tax professionals in our team, spread that globally. So one of the things that I can share is inside Dow competing with other functions, we knew in the next day, the obligations, what the people were doing, where the files were stored, the copy of the payments, the elections, because we created a global platform that we operate as an entire team. Before we used to do an Excel list with the leader, with the to-do and the deadlines. I mean, it was very effective. But now we added another level, where people can see their tasks, in their Outlook, on their computer on their phone. I'm not advocating that I want everyone will be looking during the weekends. But it's there, if you need we operate in a very different environment, and it was of course, a huge disruption internally to make this happen. A lot of resistance, people resistance, system resistance, IT, fighting with other stakeholders for our priorities. But when we discuss in the entire tax leadership, and also within the team, they want to go back two years ago when we were and absolutely the answer is no. They don't know how to operate in a different environment right now.

Gronenthal  

Yeah, what Dow put together for their platform on a global basis is truly world-class. It is really taking the tax organization to the next level. I think it's become very visible within Dow broader organization, the change and how that platform has really lifted the organization. And right now what you see happening at Dow is tax was the lead adopter on a great technology. It has really been a game-changer. And now you're seeing other parts of the organization and the finance organization also trying to extend that solution into finance as well. And so it's been a huge value add for the tax organization.

Streeter  

What other processes, Marcelo, like technologies and analytics that were introduced to increase efficiency and reduce risk have really reaped rewards? And what other changes do you think there may be to come?

Vieira  

It's a combination of keeping updated in these new technologies, right, and combining it with robust training of your organization. Something that we always discuss is sustainability when we are talking about this, right? I mean, the consultant comes, sometimes they present all these new tools, and some of the tools are very complex, but then it will become dependent on the consultants to operate those tools. So something that we always discuss with Andrea, and was a key piece of the strategy is how can we enable something that we as a tax department can operate later, independently, of course, with some partnership with consultants in terms of strategy, new tools, additional training. We were not 100% independent, and that was built into our overall strategy. So a quick example, Susannah: two weeks ago, we launched Latin America with this overall transformation we are doing that now is in the third phase. When we talk with the team they are extremely excited for everything that they are learning professionally, personally. They know that they are very much more marketable professionals, after being exposed to all this technology. We did two days of the data digital academy, now in Latin America, with the entire team. 80 people attending technology seminars, being trained and talking about the future, about how can they do better? So you speak with the team now, they speak with a different mindset. So it's super exciting. And that energy goes beyond the tax department you know, as Andrea was saying the treasurer is now curious, controllers are curious, the business is like, 'oh my gosh, I've never seen such a nice tool.' And you transform the organization. 

Streeter  

Great. It's really great to hear. Andrea, in what way do you see continued returns on this investment? Of course, Marcelo has been talking about time and efficiency savings, what other returns are there?

Gronenthal  

I think there's a lot of benefit from a value creation perspective. The amount of analytics that Marcelo and his team are able to do very quickly on the business data is incredible. And so it goes back to being able to frame up the information and being relevant in the business conversation. And I do think that this platform and the tool, really bring the tax organization to a different level. And most definitely, from just an overall effective risk management perspective, the tool enables them to have the global transparency that they need to know where there might be emerging areas of risk, so that they can get in front of them and manage them effectively. And make sure that they're taking consistent approaches around the globe. So again, the portal solution absolutely does that for them. And lastly, as Marcelo has said, the cost-effective approach. They have been able to continuously identify more efficient ways to do things because they're using the technology to help them identify. And so they've created a continuous improvement mindset. 

Vieira  

Andrea, I think you touched on some of the points, but Susannah, to give some examples. During the pandemic, the first three, six months of the pandemic, we knew that we are operating in more than 100 countries and we knew that all the countries were publishing COVID relief. We could postpone some of the tax, deferred taxes, get additional deductions, so on and so forth. I received the questions from the C-suite. Are we taking advantage of all the reliefs globally? How can you answer these if you don't have a robust platform? We partnered with EY on a COVID tracker app. So we had the global legislation available for all the countries that we operate in. We needed access and our team going through a portal, reading the legislation. We completed this exercise in 20 days, and we took advantage. That was a huge cash benefit for the company, just allowing the company to make an election to pay something three months later, because the government was giving those opportunities. The same as we have today with the global credits and incentives platform. So we also partner not only with EY, but with our stakeholders overall. We capture the entire tax incentives applicable available in the market in the US and in all the countries that we operate. Incentives for carbon emissions, for environmental, for people, for hiring. So when we decide on a new project with the business, we go to that particular country and we have a portfolio. 

Streeter  

Marcelo, thank you so much for outlining all of that. And just before we go, I want to ask you both for any other companies setting out on this journey, what is the best piece of advice that you can give? Andrea to start off with?

Gronenthal  

I think one of the most important things that you need is executive sponsorship. It's really hard to move the needle if you do not have that. And when I mean executive sponsorship, that also means sponsorship from the business as well. I think change agents are very important, identifying people within your organization that are going to help champion and drive change. And it is very important to engage your broader organization and make sure that they are a part of the process or part of the journey. So they don't feel like this is being done to them, but that they're a part of creating something special. And lastly, you probably need to understand the pace of change, you need to gauge you know, the speed in which you can make these changes. You need to have endurance, and you need to have visible changes along the way to make sure that people have the energy to drive to a better place. And you can also win over the skeptics. So change management and sponsorship are super critical.

Vieira  

Yeah, I totally agree with Andrea. I mean all companies have priorities. And we have our internal competitions. So how can tax be in front for a business? In front of HR, or other functions that also have compliance and also want to transform and be better. So it's all about value proposition. We sit with the business and we show our business case. And as Andrea mentioned, the C-suite see the value that we are bringing. That's critical. One point is budget as not only tax is the priority, but you need to have a healthy budget to operate because some of those technologies, there is a payback. To create a data hub requires mapping the entire data set elements that you need to fulfil the compliance. You need to partner with other companies to have the best manipulation data tools. You need to create bots. In our journey more than 40 bots automate the process consistently. So all of these combinations of things are critical. Budget, C-suite enablers, the tax people, the change agents.

Streeter  

Thank you both, for being so expansive and explaining everything so well, on this podcast. It really has been great to hear your very valuable insights. So thank you very much for joining me.

Vieira  

Thank you, Susannah.

Gronenthal  

Thank you.

Streeter  

And for more information, you can visit ey.com. But a quick note from a legal team. The views of third parties set out in this podcast aren't necessarily the views of the global EY organization, nor its member firms. Moreover, they should be seen in the context of the time in which they were made. I'm Susannah Streeter I hope you'll join me again for the next edition of Tax and Law in Focus brought to you by EY, building a better working world.