Businesses have made use of software like MS Word and Excel to publish all kinds of corporate reports for many years. While it has greatly improved the flow of information, it has also begun to create a vast pool of documents that need to be tracked, updated, secured, distributed, and archived across various teams responsible for compliance reporting.
The finance and accounting functions in an organization are always striving for greater efficiency concerning the publication of corporate information. In this quest for increased productivity, they often find themselves being limited by the tools they have been using, preventing them from realizing process improvements, cost savings, and inter and intra-departmental collaboration.
Therefore, a lot of companies of all shapes and sizes are looking to leverage technology to bring substantial improvements concerning corporate reporting. A unified solution that facilitates the management of corporate disclosures can prove to be very useful for this purpose.
Disclosure Management (DM) software makes it possible to author, review, and finalize corporate reporting information. It is used to maintain an archive of reports, documents, or statements that may be required for disclosures and regulatory filings. People working in the compliance teams of organizations generally find a use for such software to improve collaboration, automate functions, and bolster the transparency of disclosures. Users of such software can create, oversee, and produce reports and statements that may then be shared with various stakeholders.
While it is daunting to move finance professionals and auxiliary functions away from traditional software that they have been using for years, making the transition to a cloud-based Disclosure Management (DM) system can alleviate existing challenges and provide additional benefits for management teams and stakeholders alike.
So let us take a brief look at 7 ways it can help Finance teams in an organization and facilitate the production of high-quality documents:
More Efficient and Faster Reporting
One of the biggest upsides of a robust DM solution is its ability to unify multiple teams working on different parts of a document or report and organize the entire exercise by providing full visibility to those working on it. This increases the overall efficiency of all the functions working on a document and allows for the quicker publication of a report.
Streamlined Workflow
A good DM solution can help companies streamline their workflows by providing the ability to designate specific roles and abilities to all the people working on a document in conjunction with each other. This not only allows companies to compartmentalize tasks but also allows them to make optimal use of all available resources thereby ensuring increased productivity.
Less Error-prone and Manual Inputs
DM solution that comes with the ability to publish financial reports in XBRL can often automate a lot of the data that needs to be input by various people working in reporting teams. It might employ ML or AI to achieve this and thus produce reports that require minimal manual intervention and are free of errors.
Version Management
When working with large reporting teams, every team member may be working on a different version of the report or document. A good DM solution can enable team members to create versions as and when required, compare them in track changes mode, and restore prior versions should the need arise.
Greater Visibility and Control
Cloud-based SaaS solutions can provide full transparency to people working on different sections of a document or report. Additional controls can be defined by people based on the roles assigned to the people working on these reports that prevent or allow them from making changes to particular sections.
Enhanced Data Security
There are no compromises to be made when it comes to data security on the cloud. A good DM system can encrypt, encode, and distribute data among multiple physical and virtual servers across geographically dispersed data centres. This type of system eliminates common security risks associated with physical access to data storage and networking systems.
Economical and Can be Deployed at Scale
A cloud-based DM solution can receive updates to the platform on-the-fly allowing you to always be on the latest version and experience the most up-to-date features. It is easy to deploy across geographies and can help realize substantial savings in cost across the organization.
Organizations today are always on the lookout for the easiest and most effective way to deal with report authoring that includes tight timelines for the preparation and submission of disclosures. These compliance reports are only going to swell in number as things like climate-related disclosures gather more steam. The best way to deal with this regulatory quagmire is to employ a DM solution that is the right fit for you and is always ahead of the game. Authoring corporate reports isn’t as hard today as it used to be. Choosing a platform that works for you is half the battle.
