Of the many customer applications that will be showcased at DIALOG 08, the one developed by SAT, the tax collecting authority for the Mexican Federal Government, really caught my eye - and not just because of the opportunity for a cute title for today’s post. Statistics such as “a 93% reduction in paperwork,” “1,800 tax-paying scenarios,” and “2.5 million tax return questionnaires” really do grab your attention!

The application, which makes it easier for SAT to implement changes in taxation policy, was developed with the help of ILOG alliance partner EMC Documentum. It relies on ILOG’s business rule management system (BRMS) together with a new service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM) implementation to automate the processing of tax questionnaires, determine taxpayer credit worthiness, and manage workload assignment policies.

SAT’s business rules are very complex and implementing these rules with regular code was proving increasingly difficult and painful. ILOG’s BRMS provided the necessary separation between the business rules and the application code, offering immediate benefits such as the ability for taxpayers to self-register online, and enabling tax officers to change rules by themselves without depending on IT.

The statistics are indeed impressive, but what’s really inspiring here is the long term contribution that this application will make to the Mexican government’s ongoing program of tax reforms. While JRules can’t (yet) make you live forever, it is helping to improve the distribution of wealth and the living standards of millions of Mexicans - and that’s definitely worth a closer look!

Roberto Pazaràn, architectural leader, Taxation Administration Service of Mexico, and Christopher D. Preston, senior director, Worldwide Product Marketing TCM, Content Management and Archiving, EMC Corporation, will present Agile Tax Management Using Rules and BPM: Tax Administration Service of Mexico at DIALOG 08 on Monday February 25th from 2:30 pm - 3:15 pm.