How to build a flexible Tax Governance Strategy
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Module 5:
The future-proof (global) tax team
This is where the road leads. You've mapped your terrain, won your sponsors, brought people along and made the change stick. Now: the team that's ready for whatever comes next.
In this module you will learn:
- Hire for more than tax. Technical knowledge is the floor. Technology fluency, data skills and the ability to work across the business are what set the future team apart.
- Add a tax engineer. The translator between tax and IT is now a critical role, not a luxury.
- Think in processes, not tasks. The tools will keep getting smarter. The people who understand the process behind them are the ones who stay valuable.
Tax technical is the floor, not the ceiling
Every leader we spoke with said the same thing: knowing tax is no longer enough. Diana Hansen, Sr. Director Global Tax at Trident Seafood, has seen how big even the basics can be. Until recently, her team did filings on paper: printing out forms, writing calculations by hand and scanning them back in. Simply moving to Excel was a genuine leap. So when she lists what the future team needs — comfort with Excel, openness to AI, modelling and strong communication — she means each one as a real bar to clear, not a formality.
There's a concrete payoff. Aaron Meneghin at Valentino points to a report that once took two full days a month and now runs with AI in about half an hour. That time doesn't disappear. It moves to higher-value work, which is exactly where a future-proof team spends its energy.
Brigitte Baumgartner of The Tax Graph expects tax teams to get smaller, not bigger, as automation absorbs the repetitive work while compliance keeps climbing. That makes the human skills decisive. "AI is not going to be a leader in your team," she says. "It's hardly going to motivate your team, love a process, and get people excited." The trait she values most is adaptability: the leaders who keep their seat at the table are the ones who "learned to serve" and can reinvent themselves as the tools change.
The new critical hire: the tax engineer
If there's one role the future demands, it's what Jesús Ricart, Head of Indirect Tax at Al Tayer, calls the tax engineer. This is the person who sits between tax and IT and translates one into the other. "The translator of your requirements to the IT people," as he describes it. Without that role, he argues, organisations never get full value from the tools they buy, whether that's a new ERP, e-invoicing or AI.
It reflects a deeper shift in mindset. "The tools will get smarter," Jesús says, "but people need to really understand what is happening and why." The future-proof professional thinks in processes, not isolated tasks: the process, the data behind it, and the technology stack it runs on. Master that, and you can map and automate almost anything.
Build it global, and stay proactive
A future-proof team is also built for a global footprint. Jesús assembled his by choosing the right talent for each jurisdiction: a Saudi national in Saudi Arabia, Arabic speakers where they mattered, local talent as it emerged, expanding from a single specialism to full coverage as the business grew. The team is shaped to the map, not forced onto it.
And it's proactive, not reactive. Tax authorities are going digital fast, and as Jesús puts it, "they want your data": consistent, accurate and in real time. The teams that thrive anticipate that demand instead of scrambling to meet it. VJ, who led Shell's transformation, describes the end state well: tax governance becomes "an integrated, real-time, digitally enabled governance function with clear ownership and evidence-based assurance. Not about more effort or more controls, but operating models that scale with complexity."
In short
- Hire for more than tax: add technology, data and people skills.
- Bring in a tax engineer to translate between tax and IT.
- Bet on adaptability, and let AI handle the repetitive work, not the human work.
The destination
That's the future-proof tax team: technically sharp, technology-fluent, process-minded, globally built and always a step ahead. You won't get there in a single project, because the work never really ends. But with the right terrain knowledge, the right sponsors, the right people and processes that stick, you can build a team ready for whatever tax, technology and regulators do next.
If you'd like to see how Keeyns helps tax teams turn all of this into one clear, connected way of working — every process, entity and obligation in a single source of truth — we'd love to show you.