I almost overlooked the news blurb regarding Emancipation Day, until I saw the word “taxes” in the title and did a double take. Emancipation Day is being celebrated on Friday, 
pushing the official tax-filing deadline to April 18. Effectively, this gives us three extra days to file our taxes this year. And if you’re like me, you’re probably letting out a whoop of delight as we gain some extra time to file our taxes this year.
According to Jackson Hewitt, over 60% of all Americans use a paid tax preparation service to file their taxes. That’s a great opportunity for providers such as H&R Block, the world’s largest tax service provider, whose headcount jumps exponentially every year between December 1 and April 15.
Due to the seasonal nature of the tax business, H&R Block scales from several thousand tax professionals to more than 100,000 mostly temporary associates every tax-filing season. The influx of temporary workers puts an enormous strain on the company’s business processes, including the deployment of streamlined and reliable technology infrastructure to cater to a seasonal spike in capacity. By deploying virtual desktops (VDI) with thin clients as endpoints, H&R block was able to scale and simultaneously realize significant capital savings.
Instead of physically updating and maintaining every end-point device, H&R Block’s IT team now has the ability to remote manage and configure, with the ultimate goal of achieving turnkey set-up. Finally, the central administration of tax data enhances its security. For this effort, in 2011 H&R Block was honored with the CIO 100 Award from CIO Magazine for leveraging client computing solutions to simplify computing infrastructure during tax season.
Supporting Seasonal Workers with Desktops-as-a-Service (DAAS)
Similar to H&R Block, other firms can benefit from desktop virtualization during spikes 
associated with tax-filing season. With cloud-hosted virtual desktops, users in these environments can be provisioned with desktops simply and easily. Then, when their needs are over, IT can simply turn off the service.
Find out how you can support contract and temporary workers cost-effectively with cloud-hosted virtual desktops and apps.
[Related: Supporting Temporary Use Cases with Desktops-as-a-Service (DaaS)]
VDI Transforms Republic Bank’s Tax Call Center
Every year, Republic Bancorp’s Tax Refund Solutions (TRS) business unit staffs a call center with 450 seasonal workers, all hired to help customers prepare tax returns. Year after year, the bank rented a fleet of call-center computers for six months, which cost them as much as a three-year equipment lease. Managing the deployment also posed numerous security and imaging challenges.
Read this case study to understand how desktop virtualization transformed the tax service call center at Republic Bank and helped them slash costs and improve productivity. With VMware desktop virtualization, Republic Bank’s Tax Refund Solutions Unit was able to save approximately $300,000 a year.
[Related: Making the Case for Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure—A Case Study]
Meet Your Company’s Seasonal Rush with VDI
Tax preparation is considered by many to be a recession-proof industry. No matter what, people have to file tax returns, year after year. Given the tremendous revenue opportunity and a seasonal workforce that needs secure and scalable end-user computing, firms can invest in solutions that are cost-effective and simplify technology management. And leading firms accomplish all of this without the expense of maintaining extra infrastructure that may very well remain unused once tax season is over.
Contact VMware today to learn more about how we can help support your end-user computing needs for seasonal and temporary workers.
