Niall Kiernan, Senior Director of Product Management for eCommerce and Marketplaces at Vertex
Tell me a bit about your career, your journey into the tax industry, and your progression towards your current role at Vertex?
“I wouldn’t say I have a classic tax background in the way that many of my peers would at Vertex. I joined Citibank in 1999, where I started to build my career as a product manager.
What the banking and payments industry gave me – especially now as we move towards a convergence of payments and tax within the eCommerce space – was a solid understanding of how payment flows work, which is critical to eCommerce and marketplaces.
Over the following five years post Citibank, I worked in the banking regulation software space, in banking book collateral management, which is a particularly complex and highly-regulated area.
From there, I moved into product safety regulation to work with some of the largest brands in retail and became very familiar with the product lifecycle, looking at areas such distribution and delivery chains. I held a position as Head of Product at a company called Taxamo, for example, which initially served digital services eCommerce businesses. It was here that I found my footing in indirect tax and developed an understanding of how it impacts the eCommerce journey – which is at the core of what Vertex does for its clients.
Joining Vertex has allowed me to expand this knowledge even further, and draw great insights from our team of subject matter experts to address new, emerging challenges for clients in the realm of indirect tax – which is constantly evolving each day.”
What does your day-to-day role at Vertex involve?
“As Senior Director for Product and Marketplace I’m responsible for the Vertex ecommerce strategy, working with various stakeholders and our exec team to ensure the strategy is robust, well understood, and flows throughout the organisation. I work very closely with the various other departments – particularly engineering on one side and our commercial organisation on the other.
This is to ensure we’re regularly interacting with and listening to our customers, understanding their feedback, and merging that into our requirements to continuously improve our products to solve market challenges. Then, on the commercial side of Vertex, from sales to marketing, we can refine our go-to market message so that it is positioned correctly and resonating with these customers.
We’re always aiming align our marketing messaging with the conversations our sales teams are having, so that everything they’re doing matches up with the products we’ve built. Ultimately, Vertex’s goal is to deliver quality products to our customers, and it’s my responsibility to ensure that happens.”
What trends within omnichannel commerce are you currently experiencing? What are the common challenges customers are experiencing within the eCommerce and marketplace space?
“In terms of omnichannel commerce, a particular challenge for traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses is tapping into the eCommerce or marketplace channel, from a marketing perspective as well as a logistics perspective.
If a customer is buying a product online as opposed to walking into your store, this raises a multitude of issues. Where are the goods stored? How will they be transported to the purchaser? And how am I going to calculate the tax on these goods? If a customer is online, it’s difficult to determine where they are based and what taxes need to be applied.
Then, for the more sophisticated companies, from an eCommerce perspective, challenges lie in that they want to grow fast and move across borders quickly, which brings hurdles like the logistics of delivering, determining the right payment provider, and applying the best tax system. Managing these complexities is costly, so Vertex’s goal is to facilitate a frictionless tax management process so that businesses can focus their resources on expanding their reach.”
In your opinion, what encompasses a great eCommerce and marketplace strategy, to meet these challenges?
“With a great eCommerce strategy, speed is critical. In a world where we can purchase something on a phone in a couple of taps or clicks with modern technology, we become very impatient when it comes to the purchasing process. If a customer thinks they are buying something for £10, but there’s an extra tax for another £5 or an extra delivery charge they weren’t expecting, they are very quick to drop out of that purchasing cycle.
That’s why a good eCommerce strategy should encompass a fast, frictionless experience to ease the process for the buyer. Any eCommerce business or marketplace must focus on that speed and latency.
From a tax compliance and calculation perspective, what is needed is a solution that integrates with the existing buying process, taking the burden off sellers and customers.”
What is your view on where the global eCommerce sector is heading? What trends or disruptions can we expect over the next 10, 20, 50 years?
“The current trends point to a continued increase at which the speed of eCommerce is growing, as well as an optimisation of distribution chains which will further improve the buying process. Considering the likes of Google Business Message (GBM) and the advancement of AI, the process will rapidly become optimised further as these tools are more readily used.
There will also be a focus on improving the ways in which we deliver goods, for example, using drones to optimise the transportation process. Even virtual reality has the potential to allow customers to virtually walk into a shop or see how something looks without having to set foot outside the house, further optimising the purchasing experience for consumers.”
What does it mean to you to be an industry leader in the tax software sector?
“We’re very proud of who we work with at Vertex, with 60% of the Fortune 500 using our services, which gives us the scope to be trusted thought leaders in the tax software space. With 40 years in the tax industry, it’s great to see that people will come and talk to us about new ideas and opportunities for projects.
For example, we’ve recently launched a new product called Iris which helps clarify sustainability and tax compliance obligations. It’s great for Vertex to broaden out from tax calculation and determination and solve more problems in the end-to-end flow of retail and eCommerce.”
What does the future look like for Vertex?
“We know that at our core, Vertex is a tax calculation and determination business, and that’s what has helped us grow over the years, expanding from the US into international spaces. At the same time, our customers are looking more and more for an end-to-end tax management solution, and over the last couple of years, we’ve really expanded into that area.
Now, we focus on filling the gaps of the end-to-end flow so that customers know they can come to Vertex to get quality products that meet all their needs. I think in the future, we are going to look to continue that trend, and work with customers and our partners to understand what these needs are in the fast-evolving eCommerce sector.
New business models are emerging all the time – with new ways of selling, charging for and delivering products – so new regulation challenges are created as a result. As Vertex evolves, we want to continue to address these challenges and improve our products and services to ensure fast and frictionless eCommerce for businesses.”
Copyright © 2023 Vertex, Inc. All rights reserved. The information contained herein is intended for information purposes only, may change at any time in the future, and is not legal or tax advice. The product direction and potential roadmap information is not a guarantee, may not be incorporated into any contract, and is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality. This information should not be relied upon in making purchasing, legal, or tax decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Vertex’s products remains at the sole discretion of Vertex, Inc. Any statements in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties described in Vertex’s filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Vertex cautions readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which Vertex has no obligation to update.
About Vertex
Vertex, Inc. is a leading global provider of indirect tax software and solutions. The company’s mission is to deliver the most trusted tax technology enabling global businesses to transact, comply and grow with confidence. Vertex provides solutions that can be tailored to specific industries for major lines of indirect tax, including sales and consumer use, value added and payroll. Headquartered in North America, and with offices in South America and Europe, Vertex employs over 1,300 professionals and serves companies across the globe.
