Maximizing Client Throughput in a Complex Tax Environment

Context

TaxValet is a service provider that eliminates the hassle and stress of U.S. based sales tax for ecommerce and software companies. 

In 2020, it became apparent that the Onboarding team was a major bottleneck to growing the business, they were not able to integrate all the companies willing to work with them. As the Onboarding team were managing both the integration of new clients and the existing clients' accounts, and they used to accept all new requests, the overload increased on the Onboarding team and generated: multitasking, reduced quality, high stress levels, longer delivery times, and longer work hours for the team. 

Plus they were not equipped to :

• have productive conversation about project timeliness in the middle of the onboarding process,
• identify a project as “off track” until the project crossed the 90-day mark (time objective of the onboarding process),
• prioritize projects

In 2020, almost ¼  of the projects were completed in more than 90 days, and many of those projects were significantly later than 90 days.  

Approach

Critical Chain Project Management was identified as a possible solution to help them identify the issues in Onboarding to allow them to move clients through the onboarding process on a more efficient timeline, plus they adressed the main cause of multitasking :

• Adding a new position and hiring people to manage the existing clients accounts
• Reducing the WIP: limited number of customers assigned to an Onboarding Manager at any given time
• Critical Chain scheduling  of all new onboardings
• Weekly review of the projects and portfolio Fever Charts, & identification of projects going "off-track"
• Monthly review of completed projects (feedback) to identify improvement opportunities.

Discover our client's testimony during the 2021 TOCICO conference
(Theory Of Constraints International Certification Organization)