IBM Cognos 8 Controller

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

Track data to its source.

• 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.

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Consolidation, validation, and elimination

Intuitive graphics make it easy to track workflow.

• 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.

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Manage performance from a broader perspective

Match data between companies for a specific group of intercompany accounts.

• 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.

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Integrate easily with current and future IT environments

Changes in user rights are logged to increase security.

• 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 MS 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.

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More:

• Read the IBM Cognos 8 Controller Fact Sheet
• Read about the 200+ Standard Reports available with IBM Cognos 8 Controller
• Read the Financial Reporting and Consolidation study from Ventana Research
• Visit the Compliance
• Visit the Cognos Innovation Center for Performance Management

Additional Resources:

Performance & Compliance: Neither is Optional

Online Demo

Learn how to deal with the paradox of managing compliance while improving performance. This microsite offers valuable insights on how you can streamline consolidation, compliance and reporting processes - while enhancing performance management.

Financial Consolidation & Reporting for Visionary Finance Executives: IBM Cognos Controller

Online Demo

Learn best practices for: Managing the processes of consolidating financial information. Delivering external management and corporate reporting. Providing transparency to sustain compliance and performance.

Consolidation: Laying the Groundwork for Sustainable Compliance

White Paper

Laying the Groundwork for Sustainable Compliance.

Delivering financial results – with or without spreadsheets – that is the question

Web Seminar On-Demand

There is a clear distinction between organizations working with world class financial consolidation systems and those that continue to rely on spreadsheets and spreadsheet enhanced systems. The Hackett Group will present the contrast between World-Class and Peer Group companies in terms of their usage of spreadsheets for critical finance activities, and the impact that has on the cost, quality and responsiveness of the finance organization. Demonstrations and discussions will help you understand the roadmap to performance management, with introduction of Cognos Controller, the modern foundation required for renewing the automation of the close, consolidate, report process.

Performance and Compliance - Combining To Deliver Financial and Operational Insight

Web Seminar On-Demand

A key driver for improving financial consolidations is to enable actionable performance reporting. In this Webinar, we will share how best practices in reporting are critical to world class organizations, enabling better confidence and decision making. Specifically, you'll see how business intelligence enhances information communication of timely, validated financial results.

Ensuring Best Practices for Internal Controls and Financial Consolidation

Web Seminar On-Demand

Renewing the consolidation process requires organizations to evaluate, incorporate and improve as necessary their internal controls for financial data. The Hackett Group, Deloitte and Cognos will discuss and review the opportunity at hand as organizations improve their internal control environments in conjunction with automating financial consolidations.

Automating financial consolidation – The first, best step in close, consolidate, report makeover

Web Seminar On-Demand

Join us as The Hackett Group, Gary Simon, Editor of Financial Systems News and Author of “Fast Close to the Max" review key process improvements enabled through the automation of the financial consolidation process and the impact this has on the cost, quality and responsiveness of the finance organization. You’ll hear how automation in the hands of finance is the first, best step to accurately streamlining the close process, reducing data errors and facilitating timely results while supporting statutory and compliance requirements.

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