Reduce Reporting Cycle Time & Gain Better Insights with Oracle Cloud EPM Narrative Reporting
Corporate and management reporting is experiencing significant change. As reported earnings become more volatile, corporate guidance—and the ability for management to clearly explain the quality and sustainability of corporate performance—is more important than ever.
Today, most performance reporting processes are manual and ad hoc. Monthly or quarterly fire drills are endured to get report packages delivered to your stakeholders. The effort is manual and time-consuming, with flawed processes and inefficient collaboration. Errors are made in combining data (what) with narrative (who, when, why), especially when data is reentered into reports. In addition, organizations lack the ability to analyze the data to validate the narrative. The disconnected process means it is difficult to bring subject matter experts into the process for centralized commentary on content. Tracking progress and determining who is responsible for individual areas of content can be difficult. Content should be auditable, and access to that content should be limited.
Learn how leading organizations are meeting internal and external reporting needs and delivering faster, more accurate insights using Oracle Cloud EPM Narrative Reporting.
But first, what is Narrative Reporting?
Narrative Reporting is a purpose-built business process available in Oracle Cloud EPM for management, narrative and regulatory reporting. It provides a secure, collaborative, process-driven approach for defining, authoring, reviewing and publishing financial and management report packages for internal and external stakeholders, as well as a cross-cloud service reporting tool for producing integrated Cloud EPM reporting.
This solution is ideal for periodic management reporting, budget books, SEC reporting, insurance statutory filings, and CAFR and FERC reporting.
Use Case 1: Satisfying the Reporting Consumer’s Needs
Common challenges include:
- Inability to answer vital questions necessary to effectively run organization.​
- Data sources offer inconsistent results preventing ‘One Version of the Truth’ reporting.​
- Significant time spent collecting data to transform into meaningful information.​
- Blend of on-premise, cloud, and other data sources challenge traditional reporting tools to seamlessly integrate data sources.​
- Lack of user-friendly reporting tools to access performance reporting information.​
- Lack of access to relevant data due to deficient security.​
Use Case 2: Satisfying the Reporting Creator’s Needs
Common challenges include:
- Challenges faced creating meaningful reports while working in siloed environments.​
- Lack of standardized processes creates inconsistent results.​
- More time spent building and validating reports instead of understanding results to make informed business decisions.​
- Number of individuals involved in reporting process creates drag on progress due to ineffective collaboration.​
- Who is doing what, when?​
- Manual steps required to align qualitative information with quantitative data.​
More Common Challenges
- Delivering the right information to the right audience
- Aligning qualitative information with quantitative data
- Effective collaboration and efficient workflow
Benefits to the Business
- Faster financial reporting processes can help to improve deadlines and create efficiency/accuracy via standardized calculations, automated workflows, and documented procedures.​
- Greater transparency by integrate processes with consolidation and general ledger systems.​
- Automated, centralized reporting across general ledger, consolidation, and planning systems.​
- Standardization of financial reporting to eliminate homegrown, disparate systems
Finance and IT teams can also benefit from adopting a enterprise data management solution:
- Remove risk to process knowledge loss due to employee turnover.​
- Decrease cost per user.​
- Eliminate need for hardware upgrades.​
- Remain current with continuous software upgrades.​
- Access to new application enhancements.​
- Simplified automation.​
- Reduced administration.​
- Simplified integration leveraging cloud platform.​
Solution: Oracle Narrative Reporting
How do you currently prepare budget books, regulatory filings, annual reports, etc.?​ Does your narrative and management reporting process require extensive manual effort? Where does the data come from?​​
Narrative Reporting bridges reporting capabilities between on-premise and cloud, providing seamless reporting to business users. It enables organizers to adopt a standardized reporting workflow, document lifecycle management, and review and commentary solution.