As Mozambique continues to position itself as one of Africa’s most promising emerging markets, companies face the challenge of adapting their finance, tax and human resources functions to a constantly evolving business environment.
An integrated Managed Services approach has emerged as an innovative solution to boost efficiency, ensure compliance and sustain economic growth, as it allows organisations to outsource non-core functions to specialised partners.
In the financial, tax and payroll context, this means entrusting external specialists with tasks such as accounting, tax compliance, regulatory, but also in practices downstream and upstream of these processes, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, contract management, among others, in a model where technology can be integrated into the service.
In Mozambique, as in other emerging markets, many companies still rely on traditional internal processes, which can be inefficient, manual and prone to errors.
The complexity of the tax system, combined with the need to comply with local and international regulations, puts additional pressure on internal resources, which can find in a Managed Services partnership the dynamics and adaptability needed to meet these challenges.
On the other hand, a Managed Services model gives companies two major competitive advantages: (i) on the one hand, the model’s flexibility allows management to receive systematised information, with reports tailored to the needs of the various areas within the organisation, providing all the data needed to make (better) decisions; on the other hand (ii), outsourcing these functions allows companies to free themselves from the necessary investment in technology, team training in the face of regularly changing regulations, etc., so they can focus on their core business. and can focus on their core business, minimising investment in non-core areas of the organisation.
Mozambique is in a position to implement these mechanisms at a ‘leapfrog’ pace.
It is important to bear in mind that an important stakeholder for Mozambican companies – the Tax Authority – has invested in modernising its relationship with taxpayers, and it is expected that new challenges will be introduced in a relatively short window of time.
In fact, it is only natural that the Tax Authority will follow the path of other counterparts in adopting reporting mechanisms that aim to give visibility to companies’ financial and tax information, namely through the adoption of the Standard Audit File for Tax purposes (SAF-T) for invoicing and accounting.
Our experience in the countries where we are collaborating with companies and tax authorities shows that Mozambique is in a position to implement these mechanisms at an accelerated pace (‘leapfrog’), as it will benefit to some extent from the implementation experience of countries that have done so previously.
This protocol for transmitting automatic information to the Tax Authority will be a huge challenge and pressure for companies, since not only will they be faced with new tax reporting requirements, but they will inevitably have to increase quality control over the financial/tax information they are transmitting, as well as respond to potential tax audits arising from inconsistencies in tax returns submitted.
The challenge is great and the work of anticipating, managing and controlling the quality of information is urgent.
The Managed Services model is one of the solutions that can enable us to respond to these challenges effectively, as it will allow us to create an adaptive model – Insourcing* / Co-Sourcing** / Outsourcing*** – that combines the best people, the right process design and the technology that best fits the reality and requirements of each business.
*Insourcing – Model in which the project team designs and implements the process, which will be operationalised and maintained using the company’s internal resources.
**Co-Sourcing – A mixed model in which, typically, once the process has been implemented, it is carried out with resources from the service provider and the company, with shared roles and responsibilities.
**Outsourcing – Complete outsourcing of the process to the service provider.
