Five considerations for a successful TCMS Implementation

Implementing a new Tax Compliance Management System (TCMS) such as Impero can deliver immediate value — from enhanced control oversight to scalable risk directory structures and powerful reporting capabilities. However, to make the most of your digital compliance platform, a strategic and well-structured setup is essential. This blog outlines five key considerations organizations should keep in mind during TCMS implementation to ensure scalability, consistency, and maximum impact.

1. Define Your Organizational Scope Early  

How many brands, legal entities, or geographic units will eventually onboard to your TCMS? Even if implementation starts with a single department, long-term planning is essential.

Impero allows organizations to manage risk through a flexible risk directory system. For companies with multiple brands or international operations, deciding whether to build a unified risk directory or enable multiple directories early on is critical. This decision impacts how you structure risk categories, define control responsibilities, and align reporting.

For example, Vorwerk Group, operating in over 70 countries, utilized Impero to standardize its transfer pricing and compliance controls across subsidiaries, ensuring a harmonized approach and cross-entity comparability.

Similarly, Maersk Group Accounting implemented Impero to manage monthly and quarterly internal controls, using its datasheet feature to streamline the variance analysis process, improving efficiency and consistency across their global operations.

2. Clarify Reporting Expectations and Use Tags Strategically  

A powerful TCMS should do more than automate workflows — it should provide meaningful insights. Think about the kind of granularity you expect from reports:

• Do you want to compare compliance results by entity, country, or business function?

• Should your reports distinguish between different types of controls — such as key versus supportive controls, preventive versus detective) controls, lines of defense (first, second, or third), or control objectives like completeness, accuracy, and transparency?

• Do you need to showcase control outcomes regarding one framework specifically (e.g., SOX, GDPR, ESG)?

In Impero, our tag management is pivotal to staying organized. Tags make it possible to filter and analyze control results across dimensions. These tags form the foundation for customizable dashboards and audits.

For example, STARK Group leveraged Impero’s flexible tag setup to accommodate varying internal control activities across their different entities, ensuring that their documentation and reporting could be efficiently filtered and streamlined.

3. Prepare and Refine Your Controls Before Migration

Before importing your control library into Impero, take the time to review and improve it. Ask yourself:

• Are internal policies and guidance documents for control owners complete and current?

• Have stakeholders defined what evidence or documentation must be uploaded for each control?

• Do reviewers have clear criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of a control?

Digitizing your controls is a perfect opportunity to embed best practices. During onboarding, TRUMPF introduced a global compliance program for all employees across its 70 offices in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Leveraging Impero helped systematize and automate tasks, controls, and risk management, leading to improved consistency and monitoring across the organization.

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4. Align Control and Risk Structures with Access Management Needs  

Access rights management is more than just a technical configuration — it should reflect the governance model of your organization.

In Impero, administrators can tailor access to risks and controls based on entity, region, or function. This enables you to:

• Ensure local teams manage their own controls while group-level stakeholders maintain visibility.

• Protect sensitive documentation by assigning read/write privileges according to stakeholder roles (as opposed to full creation or administrative access).

• Create control programs based on access needs — for example, when a group of controls represents a specific area of expertise, you can assign more expansive access to designated users for that control program, while limiting access to others.  

The STARK Group example highlights this need clearly: moving from manual, paper-based internal controls across five countries to a digitized platform allowed them to centralize access management, ensuring that users could efficiently complete, justify, or defer controls within a flexible structure.

Stakeholder mapping at this stage also supports later phases like training and rollout planning.

5. Plan Tailored Training for Each User Group

Training is key to a successful rollout — especially when users range from basic contributors to advanced administrators. Impero recommends dividing users into the following groups:

• Admins: Full-system access; require advanced, hands-on sessions.

• Control Designers: Create and schedule controls; need focused training on control workflows.

• Risk Evaluators: Engage with the risk module; need specific guidance on evaluation processes.

• Control Performers: End users who complete assigned controls; benefit from sessions that address both practical guidance on handling control invitation emails and execution steps, as well as broader questions around digital compliance processes and expectations.  

Training sessions can be facilitated in English and German if needed, and materials can be adapted for regional requirements.

Impero supports tailored training and onboarding for different user roles — from system administrators to control executors — helping organizations structure adoption based on functional needs.

Conclusion  

Implementing a TCMS like Impero is more than a software deployment — it's a transformation of your control culture. From scalable risk directories and intelligent tagging to stakeholder-specific training and access management, success depends on thoughtful preparation and strategic alignment. Use this checklist to kickstart your planning and reach out to your Impero Implementation Specialist to tailor a roadmap for your organization.

Learn more about successful implementation strategies at impero.com.