A Disclosure Management solution is said to streamline the last mile of the financial reporting process. What does that mean?
The last mile of financial reporting is the most crucial part of the compliance process. No matter how well compliance teams chart their course for a smooth landing, the last mile is bound to be a rough patch because of the various disparate strings needing to be tied together.
Let’s for an instance imagine a financial close process where the required data is stored in various MS Word or Excel files that are not part of a central repository and must constantly be transferred between users. Or imagine that compliance teams cannot work collaboratively on a compliance document and must appoint a team member to track the changes every user makes to the document. Imagine how time-consuming and inefficient a process it would be. That’s where a Disclosure Management Solution comes in.
A Disclosure Management solution makes the last mile of financial reporting more efficient by accelerating the financial close process and lowering compliance costs. The solution also acts as a central repository of the various documents used in the compliance process and helps teams to keep tight control over their reporting activities.
In this blog, we explore how the IRIS CARBON® Disclosure Management system empowers financial reporting teams.
Immense Efficiency from a Collaborative Environment
The IRIS CARBON® DM Solution is a cloud-based offering – though companies can also opt for on-premise deployment. The chief benefit of cloud-based solutions is a collaborative environment that allows teams to get the job done even if users are geographically separated. The pandemic made remote work a necessity and many organisations have warmed up to the idea of allowing employees to work from wherever they prefer. A cloud-based offering allows such convenience by bringing together a remote team and giving them the means to carry on their jobs in a highly secure environment.
Speaking of security, cloud-based solutions make things more watertight by reducing the surface area for a malicious attack. In contrast, office computers with crucial financial data are a bigger attack surface.
Compliance reporting, or any other corporate report creation activity for that matter, needs to be a collaborative process. It also needs to be a highly efficient process, with very little room for error or delay. By taking care of the collaborative aspect of compliance reporting, the IRIS CARBON® disclosure management solution helps teams to plan their last mile better.
Complete Control over Compliance with Synced Documents
IRIS CARBON® DM is an Office 365-integrated solution, which means financial reporting teams can carry out their tasks with the ease an MS Word or Excel interface offers. Moreover, the documents are in sync no matter what format they are in. This feature allows reporting teams to stay on the most current document all the time. Changes made by every team member are factored in so the team moves ahead together. There is no need for users to scramble to find the latest version of the document they are working on.
The best examples of document synchronization are Google Docs or Google Sheets where every change is reflected as soon as it is made, and multiple users can work on a single document. With synced documents, compliance teams are on the same page all the time.
Smart Workflow Management for User Convenience
The IRIS CARBON® Disclosure Management solution offers compliance teams an efficient way to manage workflows. The personnel leading the effort can assign rights and roles for each user and section of the report based on a system of read-only access, edit access, and sign-off access. Accordingly, users working on a particular section of the document can lock that section for other users. The user management feature makes collaboration a seamless process while at the same time introducing checks and balances into the mix.
Effortless Report Authoring with Version Management
IRIS CARBON® Disclosure Management Solution users can access previous versions of their documents with a click. They can retrieve all the edits made to their documents easily and compare the changes between versions. This is a powerful feature as far as compliance reporting is concerned – where documents need multiple edits at multiple levels to bring them to their final form. The IRIS CARBON® platform, with its easy-to-use interface, makes version changes, comparisons, and finalisation seamless.
Accelerated Review & Commenting to Finalise Documents
When it comes to editing or reviewing compliance documents or any other reports, IRIS CARBON® offers a commenting feature, which allows users to communicate the changes required in the document. Users handling any particular section of the document will be able to spot the comments raised with respect to their section, address the issue, and mark the comment as resolved. This, again, is very similar to commenting on a Google Document. External auditors can use the IRIS CARBON® platform to raise their comments on various sections.
Hassle-free Last-minute Edits for High-quality Compliance
IRIS CARBON® Disclosure Management allows users to make changes to their compliance documents until the last moment. Very few solutions offer this functionality to financial reporting teams. This feature is especially useful in the case of digital documents where the data is tagged with machine-readable code. The machine-readable part of the document can throw up technical issues and might need immediate attention before the document is filed with the regulator. IRIS CARBON® handles last-minute edits like a pro!
One Solution – Multiple Output Formats for User Convenience
Users can derive the output of the compliance documents in multiple formats – be it HTML, PDF, MS Word, or the digital standard format XBRL. They can file HTML or XBRL documents with regulators such as the SEC, make available a PDF version of the documents for their investors to access, or download MS Word documents for their internal use. Multiple output formats make the job of compliance teams easier as they do not have to scramble to create PDF, HTML, or XBRL documents.
Powerful Digital Reports & Unlimited Expert Assistance
IRIS CARBON® Disclosure Management packs another powerful feature or reporting capability that multiple regulators across the world require. And that capability is structured reporting, driven by the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format. Preparing reports in this format involves specific tasks such as mapping data to machine-readable XBRL tags. Reports that have these tags are machine-readable and, therefore, easy to access, compare, and analyse. Most regulators, investors, analysts, and other parties prefer XBRL reports for the convenience they offer for analysis and decision-making. Companies need not struggle to make digital compliance reports because IRIS CARBON® also provides unlimited XBRL expert assistance at no extra cost.
Conclusion
The compliance reporting process has come a long way. Manual and cumbersome processes have been replaced by powerful solutions that have streamlined reporting capabilities. Disclosure management solutions, in particular, can handle the process from end to end, and it is vital that companies choose the best software available in the market. The best solution is one that comes with the right credentials, certifications, and customer recommendations.
IRIS CARBON® has been rated 4.8/5 on G2.com and 4.6/5 on Gartner Peer Insights by customers. The solution comes with an XBRL International certification, is SOC 2, ISAE 3000, and ISAE 3402 certified, and has scores of positive customer reviews.
All we say is to choose the right Disclosure Management Solution. Choose IRIS CARBON®.
