SM Supermalls: Enabling digital form submission with an AI-powered portal
About SM Supermalls
Incorporated in the Philippines in 1994, SM Supermalls has 82 malls around Metro Manila, and seven malls in China that, combined, host more than 21,000 tenants. The business’s vision is to build and manage innovative, integrated property developments that deliver a better quality of life to citizens.
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About Senti AI
Established in 2015, Senti AI specializes in AI innovation for businesses in the Philippines. The Senti AI team includes researchers and developers, enabling the organization to deliver AI projects with meaningful impact.
With Document AI and Google Cloud, SM Supermalls has reduced submission times for nearly 30,000 tax forms submitted by tenants each quarter by 67%, and lowered the cost and workload burden on tenants and its internal accounting team.
Google Cloud results
- Reduce processing time by 67% due to an increase in accuracy from AI in interpreting inputs
- Increase portal use from 70% to 96%
- Manage post-quarter peaks in form submissions without downtime or delays
- Store 60GB of sensitive data securely and reliably
- Convert paper submissions to electronic form to provide a streamlined experience for tenants
Reduced processing time by 67% with AI while eliminating paper submissions
With lockdown restrictions against the pandemic now in the past, crowds are back to malls in the Philippines. According to commercial property agency Colliers, consumer traffic at malls had reached 85% to 95% of pre-pandemic levels by late 2022. This stabilization is good news for SM Supermalls, one of Southeast Asia’s largest developers, operating 82 malls in the Philippines and seven malls in China.
"We rely on new and updated technologies to tighten our operations and introduce new processes to our tenants so that they minimize the adjustment required. The leading-edge AI and infrastructure services of Google Cloud make it an ideal business to work with to achieve these objectives," says Jennifer Escalante, Head of Finance Shared Services, SM Supermalls.
As in all countries, businesses face a range of tax obligations. In the Philippines, the Bureau of Internal Revenue requires mall tenants to withhold and submit a Certificate of Creditable Tax Withheld at Source, known as Form 2307. To enable its tenants to submit forms quarterly and yearly as required, SM Supermalls provided a dedicated in-house portal hosted on on-premises infrastructure. However, working with this portal was time-consuming and manual, which increased the likelihood of error for tenants and administrative team members at the property business. Tenants had to create the form that would be filled out automatically, then download and add a signature manually, before submitting a printed version.
"Under this system, tenants incurred courier fees to deliver hard-copy forms to our head office, while we had to dedicate manpower in accounting to receive the forms and sort them, as we also undertake manual encoding for customers that did not use the portal," says Escalante. "In addition, our accounting department had to go back-and-forth with customers to finalize reconciliations and make clarifications. Finally, our old portal could not accept electronic signatures, meaning forms submitted online had to be supported by hard copies, which added to the pile of papers we have to oversee."
"We rely on new and updated technologies to tighten our operations and introduce new processes to our tenants so that they minimize the adjustment required. The leading-edge AI and infrastructure services of Google Cloud make it an ideal business to work with to achieve these objectives."
—Jennifer Escalante, Head of Finance Shared Services, SM SupermallsUpgrade portal to improve internal and tenant experiences
While the BIR had historically required taxpayers to submit Form 2307 on paper, the organization began to allow the submission of electronic copies with digitized signatures. At the same time, SM Supermalls was transforming and centralizing the finance function. These developments prompted SM Supermalls to upgrade its portal in alignment with its broader objectives of expediting and streamlining processes, so as to deliver better internal and tenant experiences.
The business turned to AI consultancy Senti AI to build a portal that integrated Document AI, which is used to extract data from Form 2307 submissions for analysis, search and storage, with a new Google Cloud architecture. "We opted for Google Cloud to operate more efficiently and at a lower operational cost, to secure tenant and corporate data, and to access scalable storage," says Escalante. SM Supermalls assigned four internal team members to complement the four Senti AI specialists working on the project, and established the project timeline in January 2022 while concurrently conducting trials. After gathering feedback and completing modifications in May, the business officially launched the portal in July 2022.
SM Supermalls now conducts regular assessments and consults with tenants closely to obtain feedback on areas of improvement.
"We opted for Google Cloud to operate more efficiently and at a lower operational cost, to secure tenant and corporate data, and to access scalable storage."
—Jennifer Escalante, Head of Finance Shared Services, SM SupermallsA secure, scalable, cloud-based solution
With Document AI processing submissions and extracting relevant tax information, the business stores all Form 2307 submissions, whether physical or digital, in Cloud Storage, which serves as storage for its unstructured data. Cloud SQL serves as a traditional relational database providing the flexibility, reliability and scalability needed to access and run the solution. The business uses Cloud Logging to centralize and secure storage of all system logs, enabling ease of access and quick troubleshooting. At the same time, it taps on Secret Manager to secure storage of sensitive data such as API keys, passwords and certificates that protect against intrusion, and Cloud Armor for protecting against denial of service and web attacks. About 60GB of Form 2307 manual and online submissions now reside in the cloud, where the data is stored securely and reliably, and is available for access on demand.
The SM Supermalls and Senti AI team completed the project without incident, delivering a convenient, easy-to-use, and reliable portal. "Working with Senti AI was straightforward, with its team providing relevant advice based on previous projects and technology updates," says Escalante.
Through the new portal, tenants can fill out and submit online forms. The portal also features improved tracking of submitted forms, while the SM Supermalls accounting department can upload forms individually or in batches as required.
Reduce the time to process forms by 67%
The portal now has 11,000 registered users and, thanks to the stability and scalability of the underlying cloud infrastructure, can support peak usage during the first fortnight of the month following the close of a quarter. This is in addition to downtime being eliminated and zero deterioration in performance. "Most submissions are now online, enabling us to cut processing times, with only a minority of tenants submitting hard-copy certificates," says Escalante. "With Document AI delivering more than 80% accuracy in reading forms, our accounting team only needs to perform a final check for errors, rather than manually going through and encoding each form before completing that check. This has reduced the time needed to process forms by 67%, a considerable saving of about 30,000 forms submitted per quarter."
With the new portal operating for several months, SM Supermalls has achieved its delivery targets across every element of the project. "The portal running on Google Cloud is scalable by design and has considerably improved the Form 2307 submission process," says Escalante. In April 2023, with tax season fast approaching, the business was ramping up measures to encourage more tenants to submit forms through the portal.
"With Google Cloud, we are improving the efficiency of form processing. We can now scale as needed to support demand and make changes without disruption to address the requests of our tenants, thus providing better experiences and response times," concludes Escalante.
"With Google Cloud, we are improving the efficiency of form processing. We can now scale as needed to support demand and make changes without disruption to address the requests of our tenants, thus providing better experiences and response times."
—Jennifer Escalante,Head of Finance Shared Services, SM SupermallsTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About SM Supermalls
Incorporated in the Philippines in 1994, SM Supermalls has 82 malls around Metro Manila, and seven malls in China that, combined, host more than 21,000 tenants. The business’s vision is to build and manage innovative, integrated property developments that deliver a better quality of life to citizens.
About Senti AI
Established in 2015, Senti AI specializes in AI innovation for businesses in the Philippines. The Senti AI team includes researchers and developers, enabling the organization to deliver AI projects with meaningful impact.