Cosmo Consult has been an OEM partner of hsp since 2013 and markets the Opti.Tax taxonomy software under the cc|ebilanz brand. In the following interview, Mr Bibas from Cosmo Consult explains how Opti.Tax helps to process and transfer the data provided by the company.
The interview in full
In which sectors or business areas do you and your clients use Opti.Tax?
This is actually completely independent of the sector. It is essentially of interest to all customers – which, of course, also speaks in favour of the solution’s flexibility.
What has been your experience so far with technical support and software upgrades?
In our experience, we deal with various parties: on the one hand, there are our own customers, and on the other, our partners’ end customers. If we are no longer able to respond to certain support enquiries because they are too manufacturer-specific or because they require very specialised expertise, we have in the past tended to refer them to the hsp Support We turned to them because we value their excellent response times and their high level of professionalism. Whenever support requests arise, they are dealt with within a few hours or a few days – to everyone’s satisfaction. One thing I particularly remember positively, for example, is that sometimes a minor bug or something else comes to light, and when you bring it to their attention, you always receive a response. In some cases, the hotfix was sent to us straight away, or the issue was incorporated directly into the next version. I think it speaks volumes about professionalism when you deal with things that might not always go quite to plan in this way.
Did the software meet your expectations, and would you recommend the product to others?
Thanks to the export module we have implemented in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, it is very straightforward to transfer the data – which is already available in the ERP system – to the cc|e-bilanz tool, where you can then continue working at your own pace and arrive at a sound solution quickly and efficiently. This is something our customers value, and it is why they use the tool.
What additional features would you like to see in future?
I’m not sure whether this can be regarded as an additional feature – but with regard to the changes published by the tax authorities, it would be good if these were given a slightly more prominent role right from the start of the advisory process. Last year, for example, we had a number of support enquiries where long-standing users – who were very experienced – had to repeatedly adapt to new taxonomies. Then some circumstances changed fundamentally for the E-balance sheet from 2016 onwards – „Optional“ fields became ‘mandatory’ fields, and so on. These fundamental changes have led even experienced users to encounter validation errors at the end of the editing process – errors which were not actually errors at all, but simply resulted from the change of optional fields to mandatory ones. Such changes will occur time and again. I would therefore like to see such changes highlighted more prominently for us as partners and also for our customers in an appropriate manner – in other words, simply providing the information that ‘there is something new’. We were able to resolve this easily because we knew there was a difference in the relevant fields. For users, however, the question arose: it’s no longer possible to leave a field blank – is it correct to enter a zero, or what should one do? It might therefore be helpful to highlight the field in colour and actively point out that there’s a new requirement here.
How does the collaboration with hsp work? What are the positives? What, if anything, could be improved?
What could be improved? To answer this question, we naturally need to consider both sides of the argument. If, for example, there are new legal requirements that we want the tool to reflect more effectively, then we must first establish our position on the matter.
About Cosmo Consult
With over 950 employees across 40 international locations – twelve of which are in Germany – the COSMO CONSULT Group is one of the leading providers of Microsoft-based sector-specific and end-to-end business solutions for contract and process manufacturing, retail and services. Together with renowned industry partners, COSMO CONSULT supports companies in their digital transformation and offers forward-looking Industry 4.0 solution concepts. In addition to ERP and sector-specific solutions, the product range includes a wide array of specialised solutions, business intelligence and CRM systems, as well as Office and portal solutions for all areas of the business. In addition to implementation and system management, COSMO CONSULT offers comprehensive consultancy services to ensure that the software is not only implemented within the organisation but also put into practice. Read more at the Website by Cosmo Consult.
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