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Extending the value of Business Intelligence with ‘Disclosure Management’ by Gary Simon, Managing Editor, Financial Systems News (FSN)
Disclosure Mangement
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Extending the value of Business Intelligence with ‘Disclosure Management’
Financial reporting and Business Intelligence (BI) have always shared a close relationship. After all, there is very little difference in principle between querying, analyzing and reporting on financial data compared with, say, broader business data such as customer and sales analytics. But lessons learned in applying new disclosure management technology to financial reporting, especially the management of the ‘Last Mile’ of finance, has shed new light on how disclosure management solutions can extend the value of existing BI tools. In common with financial reporting, Business Intelligence capability has become more pervasive as end-user tools have become easier to use and integration capabilities have improved. These days, BI resources are just as likely to be in the hands of end-user departments as IT professionals and, just like financial reporting, the demand for business information has become more time-critical, voluminous and complex.
“These days, BI resources are just as likely to be in the hands of end-user departments as IT professionals…”
But the parallels don’t stop there. Both financial reporting and BI reporting leverage multiple data sources, involve multiple stakeholders, and often rely on manual processes and personal productivity tools to summarize and present analysis in a wide variety of formatted reports and presentations.
According to Gartner, the volume of worldwide information is growing annually at a minimum rate of 59 percent annually,¹ or to put it another way, all of the world’s data in existence today will have doubled in less than two years. This is the basis of so called “big data”. So what is driving the explosive growth in data volume when the world’s economy is hardly growing? The explanation lies not in an increase in transaction volumes, but in finding new ways to quench the organization’s thirst for new kinds of analysis on new types of analytic data. It’s a familiar story to the finance function, which has experienced a similar explosion in complying with new statutory and regulatory reporting requirements, especially since the ”credit crunch” in 2008. But now, the need to effectively manage business reviews and analysis, based on BI reports and qualitative analysis in a controlled environment at an enterprise level, is even more pressing. What organizations are beginning to appreciate is that greater access to more data is no longer a competitive advantage. In many organizations, it causes further delays of critical analysis and reports due to the manual processes used to collect, cleanse, and model data and subsequently to analyze and report. The solution, in a finance setting, has been to use disclosure management packages such as IBM® Cognos® Financial Statement Reporting (FSR), which was one of the earliest integrated disclosure management solutions to support a collaborative approach to document production, enhance productivity and establish process visibility. Although originally targeted at the ‘Last Mile’ of Finance, innovative businesses are now realizing the potential for such systems in extending BI reporting processes by providing a single, controlled,
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collaborative platform to automate many of the performance management and critical reporting processes built on BI data and reports. With the new release of IBM Cognos Disclosure Management, organizations can extend the use of existing BI and corporate performance management (CPM) solutions beyond traditional reporting and bring together disparate BI data and performance management reports with narrative analysis to deliver actionable insights to internal clients, such as the board and CEO, senior finance leaders and other functional leaders.
With IBM software, companies can spot trends, patterns and anomalies, compare “what if” scenarios, predict potential threats and opportunities, identify and manage key business risks and plan, budget and forecast resources. With these deep analytic capabilities our customers around the world can better understand, anticipate and shape business outcomes.
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“… companies are utilizing these solutions to deliver actionable insights and analysis (not just data) to internal clients, such as the board and CEO…” So, as the operational reporting becomes more labor intensive, document-bound and collaborative, other business areas can take a ‘leaf’ out of the finance function’s experience. Business Intelligence now needs to embrace the age of the document as well as transactions.
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About Gary Simon Gary Simon is the Group Publisher of Financial Systems News (FSN), one of the world’s largest providers of independent news, analysis and thought leadership on regulatory, systems and process issues that impinge on the finance function. He is a graduate of London University, a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and a Fellow of the British Computer Society, with more than 27 years of experience in implementing management and financial reporting systems. Formerly a partner in Deloitte for more than 16 years, he has led some of the most complex information management assignments for global enterprises in the private and public sector.
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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012 IBM Corporation Software Group (or appropriate division) Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 Produced in the United States of America October 2012 IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml . This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be in which IBM operates. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NONINFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. 1 Gartner Says Solving ‘Big Data’ Challenge Involves More Than Just Managing Volumes of Data, June 27, 2011. Please Recycle
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