Migrating from Oracle R12 to Cloud: How we implemented a 37-country tax solution for a leading global investment firm
Key points
Our automated inFlyte™ solution for Oracle ERP was deployed during the client's migration from R12 to Cloud to ensure multi-jurisdictional VAT compliance
With inFlyte™ and RapidInstall™, we delivered a working tax solution within Oracle in just 48 hours - compared to the several weeks quoted by one leading systems integrator
Our bespoke, fast and hyper-precise setup also allows the client to more easily recover VAT; making a positive impact on its balance sheet
About the client
Our client is a multinational investment fund administrator managing more than $1 trillion in global assets. It operates across dozens of countries worldwide and is one of the most established and respected brands in its industry.
We are proud to have worked with such a prestigious name in the financial space for more than seven years.

How did the story begin?
We first met the client in 2017 at a UK Oracle User Group event in Liverpool. At this time, the company was beginning a period of expansion in India; with its operations in the country being ramped up at a rapid rate.
Its tax and IT teams had recently been granted responsibility for managing GST in India – a task that had proven to be more complex than expected.
Indian GST is notoriously difficult to comprehend and manage, meaning only a sophisticated technological solution will deliver the required coverage, as well as the accuracy, speed and compliance demanded by any large organisation.
Following an initial period of investigation by its tax and IT leaders, the client realised Indian GST did not follow the standards and structure of European VAT regimes and a more specialised solution was needed.
The client understood the depth of experience and level of expertise we offered and selected us to work on its solution for India rather than attempt to build it in-house or find an external consultant; options that were fraught with risk, difficult to resource and potentially costly.
The initial project: India GST
Typically, businesses opt to implement the Oracle Indian tax localisation to handle GST tax calculations. However, in our experience, the localisation can be prone to bugs and can fail to deliver best-in-class results.
We therefore proposed the implementation of our industry-leading inFlyte™ solution for India which utilises the native eBTax engine which is built into the Oracle E-Business Suite ERP.
inFlyte™ features unique, out-of-the-box tax content for more than 160 countries worldwide. In this case, we installed the core of our India solution in just two days using our RapidInstall™ tool.
Building on this baseline, our expert consultants refined the solution by completing bespoke configurations to ensure the precise needs of the client were met and the technology was fully tested.
In the subsequent years our dedicated managed service team fully supported the tax setups and maintained the solution to ensure our client remained compliant with changing legislation.
Migrating to Oracle Cloud
In 2022, the client took the decision to upgrade from its existing Oracle R12 setup to a new system that would power its continued growth while enabling access to the latest ERP features and functionality.
Its choice was a linear accession to the newer R12.2 platform or a migration to Oracle Cloud.
As the business was already considering the move to Cloud in time, it decided it would make the investment in the wholesale change to Cloud ERP as that was the inevitable direction of travel.
Impressed by the regular cycle of Oracle investment in Cloud, the innovation on display throughout the ERP and the plethora of additional functionality it offered across its entire operations, it decided to commit to a full migration.
The client had already appointed a system integrator (SI) to lead the migration to Cloud, but key internal stakeholders were aware of the value of inviting a specialist tax technology partner such as Innovate Tax to manage the crucial tax function within Oracle.
The client investigated the possibility of the SI migrating the existing EBS setup or taking the opportunity to optimise the solution.
Based on its experience with the India GST solution in EBS, Innovate Tax was selected over the SI to deliver the new tax setup.
We were therefore invited to lead the implementation of the automated tax solution; once again integrating our industry-leading inFlyte™ solution to expertly configure Oracle’s native tax engine for fully automated indirect tax determination across 37 countries.
The results
The client began its Cloud journey by embracing the motto ‘Adopt, don’t adapt’. It has achieved this throughout the migration and within three months of completion, substantial enhancements to its performance in HR, Projects and Contracts, and on the General Ledger were evident.
Within tax, one of the key improvements in the new Cloud-based solution delivered by our team compared to its previous tax setup in R12 is the standardisation we have introduced throughout the client’s systems and global processes.
While its Oracle E-Business Suite solution worked, it did not offer standardised data fields across all 37 countries in question. As such, some tax treatments had to be applied one way for one country and in a completely different manner for another, meaning multiple training approaches and more complexity in solution maintenance.
The business is now confident that if certain inputs are made, it can expect to record consistent outputs. This has helped to reduce risk across the tax function and clear a path towards seamless compliance with local regulations in every jurisdiction the company trades in.
Since go-live of its Cloud solution, it has also noticed a significant drop in manual requirements, such as entering individual tax codes – reducing the resources required to manage tax and near-eliminating the risk of human error.
What’s more, the legacy E-Business Suite solution was focused entirely on charging VAT, not recovering it. The client is now in possession of a solution that offers the functionality required to more easily recover VAT; making a positive impact on its balance sheet.
By working with Innovate Tax on this project, the client also enjoyed the following benefits:
- The speed of implementation impressed the client. While a typical SI will require weeks or months to build the tax configuration from scratch and get to grips with the complexities of a tax implementation, inFlyte™ and RapidInstall™ allowed us to have a working tax solution set up within Oracle in just 48 hours. It also allowed us to migrate all setups between each test environment with minimal manual steps. Not only is our technology robust, accurate and speedy, it is fully scalable to grow with a business.
- We developed a seamless and reliable connection between two complex integrations already in place and the client’s new tax engine. Understanding how data flows from interfaced systems into the Oracle ERP to ensure accurate and granular tax data is captured for compliant reporting.
- Creation of a bespoke, fast and agile automated tax solution that is capable of hyper-precision and flexibility; fully maximising the investment in the new ERP system.
Looking to the future
Many of the countries the client operates in are now beginning to rollout e-invoicing mandates, providing it with a new raft of challenges.
While it aims to secure a global e-invoicing solution from a single provider, with differing requirements in various countries this may be impossible. In such a scenario, the standardised tax solution with automated tax determination implemented by our team will be imperative in the success of complying with various e-invoicing mandates around the world and should reduce risk, lower manual intervention and become a source of tax data that can be relied upon.
Testimonial
“We’ve worked with a number of vendors offering Oracle services. I find Innovate one of the easiest to deal with, their team is so honest about things.
“There was an Oracle localisation available for India and Innovate was upfront about it not being the right choice and being unwilling to work on it. We’ve worked with companies before that would claim to be able do something and when it comes to it they can’t. But with Innovate, the honesty is refreshing and reassuring.
“Plus, there is always a lot of flexibility when working with Innovate. When delays on our side hit our migration to Cloud, the Innovate team was able to work around them and ensure our relationship remained positive.
“Despite it still being early days, our new tax solution in Cloud delivered by Innovate is clearly an upgrade from the way we were previously working in E-Business Suite. More automation means fewer inputs are required from our team, while greater standardisation has led to more consistent and reliable results.
“Using Innovate’s Support service since go-live has also been an excellent experience – they are flexible, quick to react and very good to deal with.”
Financial Systems EVP at Global Client