Dave Kasabian's Pervasive Performance Management Blog: Disclosure Management: The New Golden Child of CPM EPM FPM

Pervasive Performance Group Blogging on BI and Performance Management Practices

Disclosure Management: The New Golden Child of CPM EPM FPM

Last week I attended IBM Cognos Vision 2011 in Dallas. This is the first post-acquisition Clarity Systems User Conference under the IBM/Cognos banner. Much of the focus of the conference was on Clarity FSR (now called Cognos FSR). Lots of happy clients talking about the control and efficiency FSR has brought to the production of 10Q, 10K, Annual Reports, and XBRL filings.

Clarity was the first to market with a product targeted at Disclosure Management and was very successful with it (FSR was the main, if not only, reason IBM acquired Clarity). Mainly due to the success of Clarity in selling into competitor bases, other vendors such as Oracle, SAP, Tagetik, and Longview have introduced competing products.

This intense focus on Disclosure Management applications is a win for Finance. As the requirements for disclosure expand there really is no reason to continue to perform disclosure reporting manually via disjointed MS Word and Excel files. There are many options to choose from to drastically improve the process, reduce risk, improve control, incorporate workflow and document the process from start to finish.

These products do not require investment in a full performance management suite and most can be used witih any consolidation system. The barrier to usage is small and the time to value is quick. To me this is a process that is ripe for automation and the vendors have done a good job of addressing a real need. If you haven't looked into automating your disclosure process yet, I suggest you do.