AstraZeneca

Needs

AstraZeneca required a robust and globally standardised approach to tax data management and compliance as part of its S/4HANA finance transformation. Key objectives included harmonising legacy tax structures across multiple geographies, ensuring adherence to evolving digital tax mandates like "Making Tax Digital" (MTD), automating tax reporting processes, and embedding tax requirements deeply into its data governance framework to maintain audit readiness and data integrity. Furthermore, there was a need to leverage advanced analytics for proactive tax risk management and forecasting.

Solution

We led the tax data workstream of AstraZeneca's S/4HANA finance transformation: one global tax data model mapped across FI-GL, AR, AP and FI-TAX; SAP Making Tax Digital modules and EN16931 e-invoicing to automate reporting; tax rules built into the S/4HANA data governance framework; and SAP Analytics Cloud on an AWS data lake (S3, Glue, Athena) for tax gap analysis and forecasting.

Achievements

• Standardised Tax Data Model:
  Defined and implemented unified S/4HANA tax data standards across regions, reducing reconciliation errors, and mapped GL, AR and AP tax codes (FI-GL, FI-AR, FI-AP, FI-TAX) consistently.

• MTD Compliance & E-invoicing Automation:
  Implemented SAP MTD modules to automate tax reporting for high-volume transactions, and integrated EN16931 e-invoicing, sharply cutting manual tax adjustments.

• S/4HANA Data Governance Integration:
  Embedded tax requirements into the S/4HANA Data Governance Framework, aligned with AstraZeneca's Global Data Standards and audit readiness, with high-accuracy pre-load validation of tax-critical fields such as VAT IDs.

• Predictive Tax Analytics:
  Leveraged SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) integrated with AWS Data Lake (S3, Glue, Athena) for advanced tax gap analysis and driver-based forecasting of transactional taxes.

• Change Management:
  Successfully managed change impact assessments for transitioning from legacy ECC tax structures to S/4HANA, securing broad stakeholder buy-in.

Benefits

• Enhanced Tax Compliance:
  Ensured adherence to MTD and other digital tax mandates, reducing compliance risk.

• Operational Efficiency:
  Significantly reduced manual effort in tax reconciliation, reporting, and adjustments through automation.

• Improved Data Quality & Governance:
  Established robust tax data governance and improved the accuracy and consistency of tax-related data.

• Proactive Risk Management:
  Enabled predictive tax gap analysis and better forecasting, allowing for proactive identification and mitigation of tax risks.

• Audit Readiness:
  Maintained a state of audit readiness through standardised processes and well-documented tax data within S/4HANA.

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