The BMA advantage
IBM Cognos Financial Statement Reporting (IBM Cognos FSR) is a relatively new addition to the IBM product stable. It closes a fundamental gap that most companies experience in their ability to produce financial statements. It also helps to cost-effectively and compliantly address the increasing breadth, complexity and frequency of statutory reporting and public disclosures.
Most companies dread producing the seemingly endless array of external and internal reports required in today’s stringent regulatory environment. This is because most companies suffer:
- A long tedious process to piece reports together from disparate sources.
- An overly manual, and costly process, with many people involved.
- Constant correction of mistakes and data inaccuracies due to the high risk of error.
- Difficulty in managing the workflow and tracking changes.
- A serious waste of professional time on clerical tasks.
Tired of endlessly pouring over countless emails, Word and Excel documents to manually produce your latest report? Then IBM Cognos FSR is the answer to all your frustrations. With IBM Cognos FSR your finance team has the tools to proficiently undertake automated external and internal reporting by helping you address all your requirements from start to finish with its sleek functionality.
With IBM Cognos FSR, your business can easily combine financial statements, operational details, commentary, notes, charts and pictures – virtually an unlimited assortment of content – into a single document. By integrating all of these information resources, you are able to reduce the possibility of errors and late filings, and quickly and easily produce documents for external filing.
Get more detail by downloading our IBM Cognos FSR product overview.
Contact BMA today if you believe IBM Cognos FSR could change the way you do business.
Product overview and features
IBM Cognos FSR isn’t merely a report generator – it’s a unique financial governance solution and a sophisticated software product that enables companies to automate the process of creating and presenting financial information in internal board packs, published ‘glossy' annual reports, or PDF documents on the internet and statutory filings in XBRL, among others.
The advanced software provides a collaborative environment where multiple users can work on different sections of the same document at the same time. A secure environment ensures data accuracy, while the use of workflow and audit trails provides better internal controls for corporate governance. Furthermore, templates can be re-used for each reporting cycle to speed up the statutory reporting process.
IBM Cognos FSR is highly useful where: (1) Data needs to be obtained from multiple sources; (2) Numerous users are involved in the process; and (3) Report output will contain a mixture of commentary/text, data/numbers, tables and graphs.
Key features
IBM Cognos FSR seamlessly links source data directly to report data. Any changes to source numbers are automatically reflected in the report.
Powerful XBRL functionality
Built-in integrated XBRL functionality makes the tagging, validation and creation of XBRL documents dramatically more efficient and less error prone.
Data integration
IBM Cognos FSR provides an easy-to-use method to pull data from a wide variety of data sources including: ERP systems, financial consolidation applications, relational databases and OLAP databases, MS-Excel and integrates with online research systems. Both financial and non-financial data can be included.
Collaboration and accountability
During the entire process, excellent workflow assures each section follows the correct process and is assigned to the responsible individuals. Changes can be easily audited and tracked, while status is easily managed.
Multiple output formats
With a simple user interface, final reports can be produced in MS-Word, MS-PowerPoint, Adobe PDF, Adobe InDesign, and XBRL. No need to retrain your staff, simply leverage existing skills and documents using the formatting capabilities of MS-Word and calculation abilities of MS-Excel.
Secure, dependable and accurate reports
Business rules ensure data integrity throughout the document, despite having multiple data sources. The result is fully formatted and consistent reports produced with a minimum of pain and in a secure environment.
Business benefits
Automating the process of collecting, preparing, certifying and controlling financial statements will help your business:
- Focus on improving reporting processes and controls, particularly in the final stages before disclosure.
- Improve the timeliness and quality of financial reporting.
- Manage the preparation of internal and external reports in a single environment directly from a consolidation system.
- Reduce risk while simultaneously improving operational efficiency.