Who doesn't know that? The annual report is ready and then the auditor comes with a final adjustment. Where on earth does this change affect the annual report? There are investigations that have looked for mistakes in annual reports and found them in almost every one.
Many participants who access various sources and work together on one document. Who is allowed to access what? Who made what change? Who merges the versions? Were the most current values taken from the sources?
These questions are familiar to everyone who regularly creates reports for internal and external recipients.
Those who are well organized have already created correctly formatted reports in the sources, which only have to be transferred 1:1 into the report. Unfortunately, comments that refer to the content of the graph or table elude this standardization.
The creation becomes even more time-consuming when almost identical reports are sent to different recipients - sometimes one chapter more, sometimes one chapter less. Quarterly board reports, bank reporting, external quarterly financial statements, risk reports for supervisory authorities are examples of this.
Integrated reporting, requirements for sustainability reports and information for investors show the broader spectrum.
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And the Solution - Corporate Disclosure Management Tools?
Exactly for this complex and interactive process, a separate class of software tools was created. With these tools, you break down documents according to the collaboration within the company, automatically link sources where possible and automatically generate target documents in the various variants.
The highlight here is that traceability and consistency can be achieved in the work. Traceability is achieved through workflows and audit trails and at the same time compliance through authorizations up to visibility.
Consistency, on the other hand, is achieved in two ways. First, the sources can be connected directly and are therefore always available for an update, even at short notice. It goes without saying that the change in values is documented.
In order to keep however also the referenced values in the text consistent, these instruments enable the work with variables. Thus, for example, the values of the balance sheet and income statement from the consolidated financial statements can always be "quoted" correctly in the notes and management report and even short-term changes do not lead to errors. The rollover function is even available for the problem of cross-report consistency, i.e. the question as to whether the values reported for the previous year are also to be found in the column for the previous year in the current report.
The fact that these instruments can in principle be further developed by the specialist department means that they are also flexible enough to actually bring calmness into the reporting process. In this process, coaching by the consultant shows measurable effects extremely quickly.
