Working Painlessly with Tech – Prismatik’s R&D Tax Incentive Story

Challenge

Prismatik is the go-to technology partner for some of Australia’s largest and fastest growing companies. Headed up by Rob Morris, the company’s Founder & CEO, the dev agency turned technology consulting partner has grown rapidly working hand-in-hand with emerging start-ups as well as major corporates like Qantas, Westfield, ANZ, EY, TCS and Scentre Group,

Rob and his team of 40 staff are experts in solving complex problems for their clients. Leveraging design thinking practices and recruiting exceptional talent, they are involved in delivering results from strategically architecting solutions through to execution. Many of their projects run for months if not years, with Prismatik’s elite technologists being embedded within the client’s team to support and lead across Rescue, Strategy, and Delivery.

Within Prismatik HQ, the company runs a range of continuous projects working concurrently but also in unison with the core business – innovation which ultimately supports team capability and client outcomes. One umbrella project, Statecraft, reflects an ongoing evolution of different parts and ideas coming together in modular fashion. Solving unprecedented problems and recognising technical gaps in a lack of certain standards existing in the market, the project speaks to years of innovative technology tooling and experimentation.

With that in mind, the majority of Prismatik’s work is highly innovative by nature and involves significant resource allocation towards research and development activities. Rob needed a Government Incentives adviser who he could trust to understand his work quickly and precisely to ensure the maximum, defensible R&D tax benefit could be achieved.

Having worked with advisors in the past who lacked the subject matter expertise to fully understand the innovation taking place, Rob was weary of time cost. Critical was finding the right Government Incentives adviser who could absorb things effectively, work autonomously, and provide Prismatik breathing room to focus on growth.

Solution

CharterNet has been working with Prismatik since 2014-15, taking reins of the annual R&D Tax Incentive application process.

‘It’s been a breath of fresh air. The process is painless. It’s exactly what I hoped for’, says Rob Morris.

‘CharterNet can effectively and accurately describe the R&D trench work, in a way that AusIndustry is able to understand clearly in relation to experimentation eligibility,’ he continues.

A multi-disciplinary team combining industry-specific expertise with Big-4 accounting experience enables a ‘painless’ transfer of knowledge from client to advisor. Pair this with rock-solid processes for gathering & documenting evidence of eligible activities and you have a smooth submission process each year.

‘The strong level of trust that exists between Prismatik & CharterNet says it all. We have really technical chats, going down to the nuts & bolts. They absorb it all and come back with good questions around contemporaneous evidence as needed’.

Results

‘We used to do timesheets which we would use to quantify R&D time spent, but that was a lot of work. CharterNet helped us develop an effective model to navigate that process. And now, we’re moving on to a broader tracking mechanism that ensures we can continuously allocate people, resources, projects and tasks to R&D accordingly,’ Rob continues.

With the biggest names in corporate Australia as client partners, along with some of the fastest growing technology start-ups, Prismatik continues to push the boundaries of what elite technology consulting should entail as their partners navigate an increasingly disruptive technology environment.

For more information, please contact one of our team here.