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Sales Tax Solution for E‐commerce Shopping Carts

C USTOMER S UCCESS S TORY

AvaTax is a Spark for Business at Echelon

Echelon Corporation is plugging into a in our home state of California, where sales
worldwide transformation of the electricity tax varies by county, city, and district and
CUSTOMER grid and is helping create a "smart energy" where you can actually have completely
Echelon Corporation network.  Connecting everyday electrical different rates on two sides of the same
devices on a network infrastructure,     street,” Brennan describes.  So Echelon’s
Echelon provides customers with “energy‐ e‐commerce endeavor sat on the back
INDUSTRY aware” homes and businesses that        burner for roughly 10 years…that is, until
Smart Grid Energy communicate with and  react to conditions Brennan and his team discovered AvaTax
Solutions on the grid. And while their products can by Avalara integrated with GoECart.
power and connect tens of millions of
devices, their e‐commerce initiative was An Electrifying Combination
HEADQUARTERS unplugged for years, according to Brennan Avalara is the leader in web‐based sales
San Jose, CA McAdams, Information Architect at Echelon. tax automation solutions through their
flagship product AvaTax.  GoECart is an
E‐commerce Lacking Power on‐demand, e‐commerce  solution that
OTHER INFO “We considered getting into e‐commerce offers a customizable web storefront.  The
Nexus in 14 States for a number of years, but there were     plug‐and‐play integration between AvaTax
always significant obstacles to overcome,” and GoECart provides Echelon with an
350 Employees Brennan says.  “In particular, we knew that affordable Software‐as‐a‐Service based
store.echelon.com sales tax calculations for online orders e‐commerce platform that, until recently,
would be a tremendous challenge because was only available to Fortune 500 compa‐
we have nexus in multiple states.” While nies with huge IT budgets. “Once we had a
SYSTEM Echelon has roughly 350 employees, they chance to take a good look at the combina‐
AvaTax Integrated didn’t feel they had the resources to     tion of AvaTax and GoECart, we knew we
with GoECart manage ever‐changing sales tax rules and found an affordable and reliable solution
in the 14 states where they do business.    that would help spark our long‐anticipated
venture into e‐commerce,” says Brennan.
Plugging Into the Right Solution
According to Brennan, the real difficulty After the new system was up and running,
was finding a cost‐effective e‐commerce Brennan recalls, “Our very first online
solution with a powerful sales tax engine.   order really put the system to the test … It
“Most of the affordable e‐commerce    came from a university which has a unique
packages we looked at offered very basic half‐percent sales tax on anything
functionality that spit out an aggregate delivered on the college grounds.”  The
view of your sales tax liability.  But we transaction was handled perfectly and
knew that wasn’t going to cut it ‐ particularly
(Continued on back …)

“We were able to achieve payback on our e-commerce
investment in just 60 days, which is fantastic!”

“"I’m glad I Echelon knew that they made the right   A “No Shocks” Online Experience
decision in choosing AvaTax and GoECart. With Echelon’s e‐store, one very impor‐
have Avalara High Powered Online Sales tant objective was to provide customers
After 10 years in the making, Echelon with a “No Surprise Purchase Experience.”
keeping track agrees that good things come to those Brennan explains, “With AvaTax, our
customers don’t have to wait until after
who wait. “Given the industry we work
the order is placed to find out what the
of sales tax with, many of our customers are on job‐
sites during the day, making it difficult to total cost is including tax and shipping …
place orders.  But our online store makes which can be significant when they’re
changes and it easier for customers to do business with placing an order for $5,000 worth of
us.”  He adds, “We see customers placing product.  Before they buy, they get totally
automatically orders late at night or early in the morning accurate pricing and have confidence
when it’s most convenient for them.  Plus, knowing they won’t pay a penny more.”
updating our they like the experience of taking time to Avalara is Always On
browse our online catalog and find exactly “It has been a total pleasure working both
e-commerce what they’re looking for so we’re generat‐
ing more revenue.”
GoECart and Avalara and we would easily
make the same choices again,” says
platform so I Customer convenience isn’t the only Brennan.  While the sales tax environment
is constantly changing, Brennan no longer
benefit according to Brennan. “The
AvaTax and GoECart e‐commerce solution worries about any of that.  “I’m glad I
can focus on was affordable and the technology was a have Avalara keeping track of it all and
breeze to implement.  In fact, we were automatically updating our GoECart
our business." able to achieve payback on our invest‐ platform so I can focus on our business.
ment in just 60 days, which is fantastic.” If I didn’t have either one of those
Brennan also states that Echelon recently solutions, our e‐commerce structure
‐ Brennan McAdams hit a milestone for the online store,   would be far more complicated to manage
Information Architect
reaching $100,000 in sales in just 115 days and we probably would have continued to
Echelon Corporation
since going live on the AvaTax and        postpone our e‐commerce initiative.”
GoECart platform.

About Avalara
Headquartered on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, WA, Avalara is changing the sales and use
tax landscape by delivering innovative and affordable solutions to businesses of all sizes. Led
by a team of industry experts, Avalara provides the easiest, fastest, most accurate and
affordable way for businesses to address their statutory sales and use tax requirements.
Learn more information at www.avalara.com.

www.avalara.com | 435 Erickson Avenue NE - Suite 250 | Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 | 877.780.4848

©2011 Avalara, Inc. All rights reserved.

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