Arkk's Tax-based Hack Day

On 15th August 2019, I hosted Arkk's first ever "Hack Day", focusing on two different topics in the Tax arena. I'm willing to bet that this was the first day of it's kind focussed on solving Tax problems with Technology in the UK, which is great news that Tax and Technology are becoming better friends than ever.

But, what is a Hack Day?

The idea comes from the book that's considered "the Bible" for Product. Marty Cagan's "Inspired" is a book that every person working in Product today should have read (and if they haven't, they need to get themselves to Amazon immediately). I read it earlier this year and I've put several of the ideas into my day-to-day, and we see great results. My team have all read it too.

The idea is that you take a day away from the business - no phones, no distractions, just a full 8 hours looking at a particular issue or topic. At the end of the day, the team present back their findings.

What about Arkk's Hack Day?

I split the 'hackers' into two teams of 5 people each. Three of them were Product/Services focused, 1 from Sales and 1 from Marketing. At the end of the day, they had to present back for 20/25 minutes, plus some Q&A, to a panel (CEO, CSO, CTO, CPO and Head of HR) with their findings. Powerpoint slides were banned, except for Product mock-ups, and every team member had to present.

Teams also knew that they'd be awarded some points for creativity, and that we wanted to be entertained. Boy did they deliver!

The question set to the teams was:

"Given Arkk's for:sight platform can manage data in a flexible way, we can tackle all manner of areas across Tax, Finance, Reg, etc. However, should Arkk tackle..."

One team was given the topic of "Transfer Pricing" and the other given "Capital Allowances". And off they went!

What happened in the day?

I wasn't in either team, but oversaw the process and dipped in for a few minutes here and there to see what was going on.

Both teams dived right into it - tackling the initial question of "what is the problem?". Considerable research on the topics, current approaches, competititors, the works, ensued.

Once the problem (or indeed, problems) were well-defined, both teams focused on two main areas:

• Personas - who are the target users and buyers of this new Product? Main market or niche? What was the go-to-market plan? What was the value we were delivering and associated possible price-point?
• Solutions - what solutions could we build to solve client problems? How much did those solutions fit in with our current software? Do they fit with our Product Vision and our mission to "simplify the complex"?

What was clear that with an hour or so to go until the presentations, that the teams were working furiously on their pitches and had distilled down all number of ideas, post-its and whiteboard scribbles into succinct presentations.

The presentations

Team "Taxmanian Devils" went first, telling the panel why we should take our tool into the Transfer Pricing market. They'd run the numbers and worked out the payback period, upside and cost to build. Some key points they made really well were that it tied in well with our existing country-by-country reporting capability, which will be moved over to the for:sight platform in 2020.

They used the Design functionality in for:sight to mock up a possible TP process, bringing to life how this fits in with our existing roadmap. The discussed key differentiators and talked through shortcomings in other approaches. They used the "Lean Canvas" method to ensure that all bases were well thought-through.

Then, team "Big Assets" discussed Capital Allowances. They set out the problem at hand, using an example of a laptop with difference CA and a depreciation treatment. One of our Sales team had been taught Deferred Tax as part of the day, as she was the one presenting this section (well done Hana!).

They defined 5 key areas of challenge - including tracking, clawbacks and planning. These challenges were bought to life in a role-play including a CFO, Tax Manager and data preparer - it was certainly entertaining!

Then came solution mode, where they offered up a mocked-up Product roadmap using the "Now, Next, Later" method (that we use for our Products for real - using ProdPad). The ideas varied from things that would be quick-wins, through to an idea in the "Later" bucket, being an AI-bot that would seek to "replicate the auditor" and assist Internal Audit in spotting audit points, before the auditors arrived. They also used a tool called "Balsamiq" to mock-up some possible screens in the proposed solution, too.

The result

Both presentations were incredible and the amount of research, work and effort that went into both was incredible. The judging panel marked on 7 criteria, so a total out of 175 was tallied up and after a split-decision, team "Big Assets" shaded it by just 8 points - it was really close!

What happens next?

The approach is all about working together in cross-functional teams to work through problems and create solutions in a short period of time. Whilst it was designed to be fun, the amount of work that was done also gives us a platform to push on from. Both topics will make their way into Arkk's "Product Labs" (where we R&D new ideas and technologies to ensure we're always a step ahead of the competition). I'll certainly be reassembling the teams to push on and who knows, we may add these into our roadmap going forward - let's wait and see!