TMCnet Feature

ITEXPO (News - Alert) West 2011 brings together thought leaders spread all over the communications and technology industries. This year’s event, which took place from September 13-15, 2011 in Austin, Texas, was no different as it acted a forum for ideas to be shared and innovative products to be unveiled.

TMCnet spoke with Tim Lopatofsky (News - Alert), CEO of BillSoft Incorporated at the event. Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, BillSoft (News - Alert) is a software company that specializes in taxation services. The company has the ability to calculate transaction taxes, file tax returns calculated by the company’s tax engine and even determine tax jurisdictions.

The company has grown rapidly this year, revealing that it has signed 80 new contracts in the last twelve months. In regards to the dramatic growth, Lopatofsky commented, “We have seen organic growth and 70 plus percentage of our contracts are from word of mouth, referrals from other contracts or additional contracts with existing clients. We have a new website in development and are coming out with some new product materials. We hope to expand into markets that we have some presence in but very little.” The industries that BillSoft is looking to further penetrate include any organization that has a volume of transaction and has a large presence than just a mom and pop (for example: a regional or international player).

Being a software company, the growth of telecom has definitely changed the way things work. Lopatofsky stated in his opinion, “I think telecom has been fairly flat in general. We do have a lot of clients in newer sectors such as VoIP—we try to stay on top of new products and services that companies are starting to offer. We get right on these technologies from the taxation perspective and make sure that we can meet all of the needs that our clients or potentials clients have.”

“What has really happened with us is that our share of the market has continued to grow even though the market itself is somewhat stable,” he stated.

As this year progressed, the company has released tons of news and Lopatosfky commented that in the past, when the company held newsworthy events they didn’t tell anyone and have realized that it is crucial to develop a position in sales and marketing.

Shifting gears, Lopatofsky stated, “Our compliance business is something we started with the intention of developing a product for processing tax returns, handling notices and staying compliant with taxing jurisdictions. About six years ago, we took on three clients just so that we could understand the full set of requirements and that has grown into its own business now. That is the fastest growing part of our company right now, as in the last twelve months we have grown thirty two percent in that specific area.”

Lopatofsky concluded, “We are doing about twice the amount of work with about forty percent of the people in the organization. When we first started doing the compliance manually, it took one good analyst to do 325-350 returns in a given month; we are now doing over a 1,000 returns by each compliance analyst in our organization.”

In the next coming year, BillSoft will continue to work on efficiency within the organization and new marketing efforts, as well as reconfiguring the internal organization for its systems to continue to handle growth.