SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure Management

Within the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Performance Management stack, SAP has launched a new product, SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure Management, to help financial departments in getting the specific financial closing reports delivered faster and more accurate to all stakeholders of the company. The solution is the result of the acquisition of Financial Statement Factory from Cundus AG in December 2010 and is SAP answer to the growing market demand for disclosure management solutions.

Financial Disclosure Management is a new software category that sits between Enterprise/Corporate Performance Management (EPM/CPM) and GRC (Governance, Risk & Compliance) processes. It automates the process of producing all kind of recurring internal and external reporting (annual report, quarterly report, internal management books, ...) with a focus on combining the data from the EPM/CPM solutions (like financial reporting & consolidation packages) with the written out analysis and management comments on the figures and ensures consistency and accuracy of the process across departments and users based on workflow and authorization levels.

SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure Management is a complementary tool that will close the gap between the existing financial SAP EPM programs that are mainly focused on the input and processing of financial analytical data as there are SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation and the financial modules of the ERP system. SAP BusinessObjects has always offered an open architecture to connect to other programs; this strategy will be also followed for the SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure Management. With this new solutions, SAP BusinessObjects is focusing on accelerating financial closing cycles, cost efficiency by streamlining the processes and the amount of rework and the decrease in risks for financial reporting.

SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure Management is a solution that focuses mainly on financial reporting and especially on the part towards the stakeholders of the company. Closing the financial statements is currently involving a lot of manual manipulations, making it difficult to get a clear view on who did what and when. This new module is offering solutions towards control of consistency of data and the processes used, auditing of the financial closure documents and the automated publication of the financial reports needed by official instances.

Integration is one of the key benefits for the SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure Management tool for existing SAP customers. Therefore the tool is offering extended integration towards other SAP financial products, external tools and integration in well-known Office tools from Microsoft. With this integration SAP BusinessObjects offers a complete solution that can be used by almost any financial department that is willing to speed up the delivery of their internal and external financial reports. Validation, extra calculations and formatting can be done in the familiar environment of the Microsoft Office Suite by leveraging the native functionalities of these products.

Next to the technical integration and interfacing of financial tools, SAP has spent a lot of their time in creating a collaborative tool to have a single version of your financial reports. The included workflow and versioning will guarantee that only a single version of the truth will exist without being a stoppage in your processing chain. Having one active version combined with the workflow will enable team members to communicate faster and have the correct information directly into their hands. As an extra SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure Management offers an audit log into each step to make sure to track back your changes.

SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure management includes default templates that will help you out in delivering correct information in the right format about balance sheet, income statement or other regulatory reports. Whenever the included templates do not comply with your needs, you can create your own reusable component and insert them into a custom template. Most general accounting standards are included into the system, such as US and UK GAAP, International Financial Reporting Standards and many more.

The SAP BusinessObjects Disclosure management application is not limited to pure financial reporting and the automated delivery of those reports via XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). It can also be used for tax and sustainability reports to stakeholders.

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