Success Story - Brunswick

Challenge

The Brunswick tax team faced mounting challenges, including regulatory changes, data complexity, tight deadlines, new acquisitions, and a hiring crunch—making their manual compliance processes untenable. Their leaner team had to be agile and eliminate manual, repetitive tasks:

• Consolidating Excel state apportionment schedules from all divisions
• Collecting fixed asset data from disparate systems
• Mapping new accounts from their consolidation ERP
• Tracking historical E&P changes on amended returns

Solution

After working with Corptax Professional Services to identify data sources and establish best practices, Brunswick used Alteryx to cleanse data and automate calculations, Power BI to visualize and review results, and CSC Corptax^® Office and Data Exchange to seamlessly connect those platforms to the wealth of data in Corptax Provision and International, Federal, and State Compliance.

Result

Brunswick says, “the ability to create Alteryx workflows and Power BI visualizations with Corptax data during tax preparation improved planning and transformed our federal, state, and international compliance processes.”

International Compliance – Brunswick uses Corptax Office and Next GEN forms to preload information to Forms 5471 and 8858—and data collect templates to import properties for new entities and populate Next GEN forms.

To eliminate headaches tracking historical E&P and tax pools after filing an amended return, Brunswick queries data from both the as-filed and amended returns, pulls the data into Alteryx to calculate differences, review results in Power BI, and pushes corresponding adjustments back into Corptax as the beginning balance for the current year.

Federal Compliance – For complex Schedule Ms, (UNICAP, depreciation, credits, etc.) Brunswick automates calculations in Alteryx and other tools, eliminating the team’s need to prepare calcs in numerous Excel files. Team members instead become reviewers of results in Power BI. Next, Schedule Ms are automatically uploaded to the system via Office or Data Exchange’s ability to automatically trigger data import when new source files are uploaded.

State Compliance – After Brunswick receives state apportionment files from their many businesses, an Alteryx workflow opens each file, cleans data, and performs calculations. Power BI easily visualizes and helps highlight items that require review. Once reviewed, a file is created to load apportionment data into Corptax via Data Exchange. Templates calculate and load state adjustments (e.g. bonus depreciation) in minimal steps with Corptax Office.

Another Alteryx workflow uses Corptax provision and compliance data to calculate and allow review of state RTP in Power BI.

In addition, Brunswick created Alteryx workflows to map new accounts and load the trial balance through Data Exchange.

Combining Corptax with analytics during tax prep allows team members to review at a high or detailed level and use visualizations to support review and planning.

Now Brunswick:

• Saves 60+ hours eliminating Excel files to calculate and verify historical E&P on all CFCs
• Automates 80% of Schedule M adjustments
• Reduces 85% of manual entries for state compliance
• Relies on technology to file timely, absorb tax changes, and weather short-term labor fluctuations