Consolidate thousands of operating units and accounts into a common chart-of-accounts structure.

Overview

IBM® Cognos® 8 Controller helps your finance organization manage the close, consolidation and reporting process.

Automate your entire close process, from data collection to financial consolidation to output. Reduce close cycle times, assure data integrity and gain the transparency that is essential for sustained compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and IFRS.

• Reduce consolidation, close and reporting cycles by days or weeks—with a single version of the facts and automated validation.
• Consolidate multiple ledgers with thousands of operating units and accounts into a common chart-of-accounts structure.
• Create reports rapidly to facilitate compliance with IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) and Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404.
• Evaluate financial results with confidence and accuracy across multiple countries, currencies and legal entities, each with their own accounting policies intact.
• Support better planning and forecasting with reliable consolidated management data, based on a clear link between statutory and management consolidation.

Features and Benefits

IBM® Cognos® 8 Controller is a comprehensive solution for the close, consolidation and reporting process. Built on an industry-leading, open-standards data platform, IBM Cognos 8 Controller provides Finance organizations with the timely, accurate information they need for regulatory compliance and performance management.

• Finance manages the process
• Consolidation, validation and elimination
• Manage performance from a broader perspective
• Integrate easily with current and future IT environments

Finance manages the process

• Amend entities, organizational structures or account details with absolutely no coding, scripting, or complex language to create and test.
• Accommodate mergers, acquisitions or reorganizations with ease. Structures and business rules can be updated once and are then reflected throughout the application.
• Provide critical financial data for the full range of regulatory compliance reporting, including Sarbanes-Oxley, IFRS and multi-jurisdictional GAAP reporting.
• Audit the import of information from its original source—a critical item in SOX compliance—and track the entire reporting process from data capture and processing to printed or electronic output.
• Meet the demands of both management and regulators with more than 200 pre-configured, out-of-the-box reports. No custom report creation is needed and fast, instant analysis is possible at any time during the close.

| top of page |

Consolidation, validation and elimination

• Consolidate multiple views of the enterprise from legal, management, and tax perspectives, or in terms of budgets, actuals, plans and forecasts.
• Ensure data consistency with a thorough validation process. Data can be readily reconciled for accuracy, with users notified immediately of any inconsistencies.
• Perform inter-company elimination in stages, regardless of consolidation structure.
• Link automatic journals to specific consolidation types for better support of mergers and acquisitions.
• Make investment adjustments for complex ownership situations, such as region-specific consolidations and reporting in Brazil, Denmark and the Netherlands.
• Collect and present financial data in multiple reporting and transaction currencies. Operating entities use their own currencies, while corporate finance can present figures in whichever currency is relevant.

| top of page |

Manage performance from a broader perspective

• Model alternative business scenarios and assess the impact by entity, business area, product, or customer with detailed “what-if” analysis.
• Access critical information that resides in Microsoft® Word or Microsoft® Excel® documents, e-mail attachments or on personal desktops. Link to any data cell and retrieve from anywhere in the system.
• Define critical success factors and link strategies to specific plans and metrics using embedded dashboards.
• Strengthen performance management by publishing information from IBM Cognos 8 Controller to models in IBM® Cognos® 8 Planning and the entire IBM® Cognos® 8 BI infrastructure—including query, analysis, reporting, scorecarding and event management, supported by Web, Microsoft Excel, mobile and search.

| top of page |

Integrate easily with current and future IT environments

• An open-standards database and enterprise-class database architecture ensure current and future support for your investment.
• Process massive data volumes and allow access by large numbers of users simultaneously. IBM Cognos 8 Controller’s multi-layer architecture scales to hundreds—even thousands—of users.
• Centralized database ensures efficient processing and administration, and a single, shared source of strategic data offers accessibility and speed, regardless of user location.
• Industry-standard platforms and databases—such as Microsoft® SQL® and Oracle—provide high performance, data integrity, and rigorous, yet flexible security.
• Embedded Microsoft Excel interface allows easy data entry, modeling, calculation and reporting.
• Two-step locking of data allows better management and control through each step of the consolidation process.
• Enhanced security for data import, thanks to access rights and log changes on import specifications and lookup tables.