South African Revenue Service Receives Complete Return on Siebel Investment 'In One Month', Reports CIO during Siebel European User Week Keynote Address.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

Siebel European User Week 2004

CANNES, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 21, 2004

South African Government Saves $3 Million Each Day and

Transforms Citizen Service Using Siebel Public Sector

Single View of the Taxpayer

Speaking at Siebel User Week 2004, Cannes, Ken Jarvis, CIO, the South African Revenue Service, today highlighted the remarkable gains made by the tax and customs revenue collection arm of the Government of South Africa. During his keynote address, Jarvis announced to more than 1,500 Siebel customers, partners, and industry observers that the South African Revenue Service had experienced a complete return on its Siebel investment in one month. The South African Revenue Service is saving almost $3 million each day--equivalent to approximately $90 million every month--following its deployment of the Siebel Public Sector Single View of the Taxpayer solution.

South African Revenue Service deployed Universal Application Network (UAN) featuring Siebel Business Integration Applications among 3,000 staff in less than four months. It has integrated eight core tax systems, including PAYE, Income Tax, VAT and Customs & Excise Tax. By introducing a single, comprehensive view of individual and corporate tax situations, South African Revenue Service is performing single registration and updates across all tax products. The Service has reduced the time it takes to generate a complete understanding of a typical corporate tax position from 3 weeks to 20 seconds. Moreover, South African Revenue Service is now able to execute immediate and effective debt equalization. Importantly, it has transformed the quality of service it provides to South Africa's 20 million taxpaying citizens.

Accenture is the lead integrator for deploying UAN, which features Siebel Business Integration Applications running on the IBM WebSphere Business Integration platform. UAN is being utilized in combination with Siebel Call Center to enable the new system.

Speaking at Siebel European User Week 2004, Jarvis said, "When we are asked about how quickly the South African Revenue Service expected to receive a return on its Siebel investment, we usually quote a couple of months, simply because so few people would believe a return on investment could be achieved in one month--but it has," he said. "UAN has enabled the South African Revenue Service to overcome the cost, complexity, and time involved in traditional integration solutions. The fact that the Service was able to integrate so many applications in just 16 weeks is also exceptional. This standards-based integration architecture is one of the most remarkable business integration solutions I have ever seen."

Jarvis continued, "Quantifying the value of the benefits has been conducted by estimating and scaling from sample data in the line-of-business systems. Take VAT, for example. By offsetting a one percent VAT refund owed to a company against other taxes that are due--which is a conservative assumption--the South African Revenue Service yields millions of dollars a month in savings. A five percent offset, which is a more likely assumption, yields five times as much."

Challenged with the loss of tax revenues and excise duties owing to fragmented taxpayer information, the South African Revenue Service developed a multi-million dollar business case for 'Single View'. This solution enables tax advisors and call center agents to easily access the full taxation status of customers, which were hitherto locked away in six separate tax and customs systems. Implemented among 3,000 staff in two phases over a 16 week period, it involved the real-time integration of the main line-of-business systems: PAYE, Income Tax, VAT and Customs & Excise Tax.

By aggregating separate customer tax records from the line-of-business legacy systems, Single View represents a significant strategic enhancement to government tax management. For the first two phases alone, the benefits include more accurate tax liability assessment, fewer data-entry errors, and a faster, more accurate response to tax enquiries. Whereas it used to take up to two weeks to ascertain a complete understanding of a company's tax situation, the single view means staff can now receive this information within 20 seconds.

For more information about Siebel Public Sector applications, visit http://www.siebel.com/products/industries/public_sector/index.shtm.

About Siebel Systems 

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