“Critical data becomes business intelligence with itamlink’s easy-to-understand, comprehensive reporting tool.”
Shannon Carter
Non-Income Tax Manager | Vistra Energy
When Vistra Energy reviewed their internal property tax processes and systems, they found workflow inefficiencies and a legacy system that no longer met their needs. Worse, their outdated software solution may have actually been increasing costs. To maintain their competitive edge and a successful, data-driven culture, Vistra Energy needed to look inward for process improvements.
We sat down with Shannon Carter, Non-Income Tax Manager at Vistra Energy, to understand their property tax management goals, objectives, and software requirements.
Founded in 2016, Vistra Energy (formerly Energy Future Holdings or EFH) is a premier Texas-based energy company focused on the competitive energy and power generation markets. Vistra Energy’s serves nearly 4.3 million residential, commercial, and industrial retail customers in markets within the United States, Canada and Japan.
When Shannon and her team conducted an internal audit of their property tax management system and processes, they found their legacy software system was creating manual work.
They were looking to transition to a solution that would help them:
Together, these benefits would reduce manual labor and improve communication.
Their existing software was unable to keep up with the demands of the busy property tax team. For one, they lacked the ability to import data in bulk, forcing Shannon’s team was forced to upload information in batches or key it in manually. What’s more, once the data was uploaded into the system, they were unable to perform necessary reporting functions. The system was also unable to interface with solutions used by other departments, making collaboration difficult.
With itamlink, Vistra Energy was able to leverage tools that helped them work with data in bulk. For example, itamlink allowed them to directly import market value and property assessment data from third-party sources. Using itamlink, Vista has been able to save months of manual data entry work, speeding up business processes and improving workflows between departments.
Shannon’s team was able to implement an automated tax approval workflow right in itamlink, streamlining their payment processes. Integrating itamlink with their Accounts Payable system allowed Shannon’s team to have invoices automatically sent to the approver and be approved in just a few clicks. What’s more, with all their payment data in one place, it could be easily accessed by multiple departments, improving collaboration and communication between departments and reducing the risk of late payment penalties.
itamlink's built-in reporting and dashboard tools provided Shannon and her team immediate access to:
This allowed them to compile their property tax data into summaries and drill down on key data points in their portfolio. Using the dashboard, they were able to ensure data was shared with all the necessary individuals, improving workflows between departments and streamlining business decisions.
“Rethink Solutions listened carefully to all our questions and clearly demonstrated how itamlink could be customized to work specifically for us.”
Shannon Carter
Non-Income Tax Manager | Vistra Energy