Government department publishes details of plans to buy and deploy a new hosted software platform to support the management of its engagements with users across the UK’s various tax regimes

HM Revenue and Customs is planning to invest more than £1bn in a new customer relationship management software platform to form the “backbone” of its oversight of taxpayer interactions.

A freshly published commercial planning notice outlines plans to “procure a strategic core SaaS (software-as-a-service) CRM platform along with core and additional supplementary products to meet the full range of eCRM capability” required by the department.

The CRM system should offer key functionality such as “registration, subscription and customer record management capabilities”. Other capabilities stipulated by HMRC include “identity, verification, access and fraud” services and “secure digital exchange communication… and document storage” – all on a SaaS basis. The department will also need “vendor-specific… architecture and product technical support” for its platform of choice.

The notice says: “These capabilities are intended to form the backbone of HMRCs customer management capabilities, and will be made available to tax regimes in priority order. The new CRM system will be required to seamlessly integrate with updated customer service platforms, including the future ‘contact centre as a service’ (CCaaS) which will also be procured in 2025, directly enhancing taxpayer interactions, streamlining services, and reducing administrative burdens.”

The department last year began laying the groundwork the procurement of the new CCaaS system. Bidding for the contract to deliver that platform – which needs to support 200,000 agents worldwide and handle up to 20,000 inbound calls, 400 outbound calls, and 3,000 webchats at any given time – will be effectively limited to the market’s biggest firms.

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For the CRM platform, meanwhile, HMRC plans to first sign a contract – beginning in 2026 and lasting up to 15 years – with its preferred software vendor. This deal is expected to worth about £1.2bn, inclusive of VAT.

Once the core product provider has been chosen, the department will then go back to market to invite bids from systems integrators to oversee implementation and “to deliver the business outcomes and benefits” the CRM is hoped to provide.

To help inform the subsequent procurement, earlier this month “HMRC undertook informal market engagement to explore the core CRM capabilities in the market [and] this exercise helped the department consider what capabilities are standard in the market and what supplementary lots were likely to be needed to ensure effective competition in a fair and transparent manner”, according to the planning notice.

This initial engagement work will be supplemented by a five-hour “virtual supplier briefing” to be held on Tuesday 29 April. After this has been completed, attendees will have until 3pm on Friday 2 May to provide further feedback on the details shared during the event.

The department expects to formally commence bidding via the publication of a tender notice around two months from now.