Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) turned to Oracle to implement a solution to speed up the process of filling in tax forms.
KRA is an agency of the Government of the Republic of Kenya (GoK) responsible for the assessment, collection and accounting of all revenues that are due to GoK, in accordance with the laws of Kenya. The main purpose of the authority is to enforce all laws relating to revenue.
The biggest obstacle facing KRA was increasing tax collection when the country had a very low compliance rate, with only 11% of the Kenyan working population filing their taxes.
A key factor was the inconvenience caused by the tedious manual process, which required taxpayers to be physically present for it to take place. KRA needed to re-engineer its processes to motivate participation in the tax filing process. They needed a solution that would be simple, convenient and efficient.
Realigning structures meant implementing tools such as iTax, which is powered by Oracle Service Cloud, Policy Automation, Social Cloud and Marketing Cloud. It ensures that the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is delivered on simplicity, convenience and efficiency in service delivery.
Oracle Tax Reporting Cloud is a tax-owned solution that works with finance systems to help deliver effective, efficient, and transparent corporate tax processes including tax provision and country by country reporting (CbCR).
Implemented in 2013 and promoted to production two years later, iTax has continuously implemented various enhancements to the system, including integrating with the various internal and external systems.
“KRA benchmarked with other Revenue Authorities such as Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) who had implemented a similar solution to manage Taxpayer Registration,” said Grace Wandera, Deputy Commissioner at KRA.
“As a result of the restructure and ease of use of the new system, the burden of compliance for Kenyans is reduced, and the KRA can rely more on tax collection as a primary means of driving the country’s growth and development.
“CRM forms an integral part of KRA’s transformation agenda that is anchored on technology for enhanced service delivery. The authority intended on integrating the CRM system with third party data platforms to widen its reach.”
Deployment of iTax
The CRM solution went live in January in time for the 2018 tax season. It has since enhanced taxpayer experience, improved service delivery and increased operational efficiency by eliminating the major local challenges.
A huge milestone for the citizens brought by the transition was being able to directly communicate with tax specialists, make enquiries and voice disputes on a single platform, in real time at remote locations.
Following the implementation of Oracle’s Customer Relationship Cloud Solution, the KRA registered an increased score of 71% on the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI); a clear indication of the hassle free and seamless taxpayer experience now being delivered by the government authority.
“Prior to the implementation of iTax in 2010, the CSI was 64.68% and dropped to 64.2% in 2012,” added Wandera
“Through the system, KRA’s social media engagement rate has more than doubled, from 300 to over 700 engagements per day and about 100 KRA agents used the Oracle Service Cloud and Social Cloud to respond to taxpayer requests, complaints and comments on iTax, Facebook, emails and call centres. Their customer query response time has improved to an average of 15 minutes across all platforms, a quarter of the time when compared to the previous one-hour average turnaround time.
“Previously each of KRA’s social media platform were monitored individually. This caused a delay in response time and with Oracle Social Cloud integrating and monitoring their social media channels their response rate increased from 83% to 94%.
“This improvement of query time, social media engagement and resulting insights have enhanced the authority’s understanding of customer needs and improved experience.”
What they did and how it worked
With Oracle’s Customer Relationship Cloud Solution, KRA has created a robust customer engagement platform that allows for every service request, enquiry, complaint and compliment to be tracked and logged across various touch points.
The CRMS includes an end-to-end issue resolution and escalation framework that was built using the Oracle Cloud platform. Since launching the cloud-based taxpayer service, more than three million Kenyans filed their income tax returns by the June 30, 2018 deadline; a 26% increase from the previous year.
The complying three million represent 16% of the total estimated working population – increasing the total number of individuals who filed their taxes by 11%.
The KRA additionally collected US$13.65 billion in the 2016/17 financial year; a substantial increase from US$12.1 billion that was collected the previous year.
“The positive results are an indication of improved customer perception, a drop in customer response rate, increased availability and engagement across all channels,” said Wandera.
“The KRA’s vision is commitment to developing a solution that is hinged on the concept of customer centricity, the implementation and rollout of iTax has brought the authority that much closer to achieving this.”
Moving forward
KRA is set to integrate more users into the system to further enhance service delivery across all relevant customer touch points and communication channels.
Following complete integration of the system, the CRM will be positioned as the KRA’s gateway to its online and offline services.
A total of 6,859 people are employed at KRA and Wandera says the company has undertaken extensive staff training to ensure employees are engaged with the system and are capable of using it to its full potential.
“The feedback obtained from staff shows that their satisfaction level is currently at 74.69% regarding the iTax system, whereas their productivity has improved to 80.36%.
“Since the initial CRM rollout as part of the authority’s transformation agenda, their engagement with taxpayers has significantly improved.”
Geno Sher Malmqvist, Senior Sales Manager for Applications at Oracle Kenya, said KRA has created a robust customer engagement platform.
“It allows for every service request, enquiries, complaints and compliments to be tracked and logged across various touch points,” she said.
“It also includes an end-to-end issue resolution and escalation framework that was built using the Oracle Cloud platform. KRA will soon also incorporate the OracleCustomer Analytics system for intelligent insights that can be used to drive exceptional customer engagement.”
