FSN - White Papers

New FSN White Paper -"Margin Pressure -The strategic and operational response to sustaining profit margins in challenging markets."

Profit margins are under pressure from a combination of geo-political change, unprecedented economic volatility and structural changes such as the impact of the internet on trading methods. In response to the more testing conditions, businesses have ‘tightened their belts’ and sought to reduce costs. But with an inability to control prices and costs already cut to the bone there are seemingly few places to turn to for improved profitability. In this FSN White Paper, sponsored by Oracle, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor, explores what practical strategic and operational steps businesses can take to improve their margins.

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"Why combining 'numbers' and 'narrative' is critical for next generation Disclosure Management."

In this white paper Gary Simon, FSN\'s managing editor, works with Tagetik to provide a new perspective in group financial reporting which seeks to explain what sort of technology support is required to reconnect pre- and post-consolidation phases so that the Last Mile is not seen as a separate activity or afterthought but as a part of a continuum from financial close to reporting; in which numbers and narrative are inextricably linked.

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Finance Modernization – adopting a finance systems architecture fit for the networked economy

It is often said that, “The only thing predictable about life is its unpredictability.” Change is also a feature of business life– it’s what drives businesses forward – it acts as a spur to organizations to achieve even greater heights. But the last decade has seen unbridled change and volatility on a scale that is unprecedented, punctuated every so often by a mixture of man-made and natural events of breathtaking proportions. In this major new white paper, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor and senior Oracle executives consider how management might execute on its strategies, accelerate decision making and maintain performance when everything around it is changing at Twitter-speed?

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"Maximising the productivity of the financial close with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions"

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the ideal companion technology to financial reporting, since it focuses management attention on the workflow, tasks, issues and documents that are intrinsic to the process, allowing management to purge wasteful activities, eliminate paper handling and encourage collaborative working. Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor shows that when coupled with an appropriate methodology (such as ‘Lean Six Sigma’), benchmarking and best practices then ECM can form the foundation not only of optimised processes but continuous process improvement as well.

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Beyond the 'final mile' of group (corporate) financial reporting

The group (corporate) financial reporting process has been in a constant state of flux since the introduction of the Sarbanes Oxley Act in 2002. Regulation and compliance have been in the ‘driving seat’, stretching the breadth of reporting, accelerating reporting deadlines, introducing new information requirements and ushering in a new era of electronic filing based on the global XBRL standard. But the greatest impact has been on the final throes of the financial reporting supply chain – the so called ‘final mile’. The challenge now is how to integrate the key process steps within the final mile and, secondly, how to integrate the final mile with the earlier pre-consolidation phase of the reporting cycle so that the benefits of data quality, enhanced control, process visibility, speed and productivity flow seamlessly through the reporting supply chain – from start to finish. In this white paper, Gary Simon, FSN managing editor, looks at how Oracle seeks to solve the integration challenge.

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"Managing the Risk of Fraud and Error"

Fraud and error are two sides of the same coin. Lax procedures coupled with organizational inertia, poor systems and processes are the ‘Petri dish culture’ on which fraud and error thrive.

In fact the scale of fraud is truly breathtaking. The amount of money lost annually to governments, private sector institutions and individuals in the United States alone is estimated to be equivalent to the Gross Domestic Product of a country the size of Brazil. Neither is this a ‘victimless’ crime. Occupational fraud flows straight through to the bottom line, robbing businesses and their employees of profit and investment while driving up costs for government agencies, NGO’s and not-for-profit organizations. Errors too can be just as costly and devastating to organizational effectiveness and reputation. In this new FSN white paper prepared with the help of Oracle, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor looks at what is driving the growth of fraud and error and what can be done to reverse the tide?

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Multinational ERP –the challenge of global deployment

The global economic outlook has continued to improve yet great uncertainties persist about the magnitude of the recovery. The key to managing uncertainty in such volatile conditions is to have complete and timely visibility of business performance. But this is easier said than done. The fashion for large scale ERP systems in the expansionary 90’s proved very successful in centralising processes and driving down transaction costs but in more challenging times, when organisations need to be more nimble and responsive to change the traditional ERP model has proved cumbersome and unwieldy. In this white paper, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor asks; Is there a better way of achieving global consistency, regulatory compliance and oversight of business performance without stifling local businesses’ operating autonomy and culture?

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"IFRS for SMEs" - an update

(We recommend that this is read in conjunction with the earlier FSN white paper “The challenges facing companies migrating from U.S. GAAP to IFRS using Agresso ERP”)

The guiding principle behind the global IFRS initiative was to achieve consistency and harmonisation in financial reporting across the world. Arguably, this has been achieved with more than 110 jurisdictions adopting full IFRS or planning to converge with it in the foreseeable future. In the first instance IFRS applied mainly to listed companies. Plainly the motivation was to ensure that investors and other readers of financial statements could compare the performance of companies on a like-for-like basis regardless of where they were located. So shouldn’t the same logic apply to privately held companies? Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor looks at the issues.

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Automating the Financial Close

Financial processes across the globe are in a constant state of flux. New accounting standards and regulatory requirements at a local and international level mean that the corporate reporting landscape is continuously changing. In fact the pace of change is accelerating, with Global 2,000 companies facing more challenges in the first decade of the 21^st century than in the whole of the previous two decades. But how does a company increase the dependability of reporting and satisfy the demand for faster information and auditability against the backcloth of increasing reporting complexity? The answer, says Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor, lies in increased process automation.

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Mastering the Financial Close

Over the last two decades the Financial Close process has relied heavily on a hotchpotch of technical solutions based principally on consolidation software, ERP systems and spreadsheets. Inevitably, the concept of a continuous workflow through the RSC is completely lost in this loose assembly of fractured applications. Yet it is workflow and collaboration that is the foundation of an effective financial close process. The question is what sort of architecture can cost-effectively provide this level of management control and visibility? Gary Simon, FSN\'s managing editor takes a look.

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