SAP Disclosure Management streamlines the preparation and publication of financial statements — automating data integration, approval workflows and version control across the annual reporting cycle.
The business case
Companies must publish annual reports summarising their activities and financial status to shareholders each year. These documents combine compelling graphics and narrative with detailed financial data, disclosures and operational information spanning the reporting period.
The challenges
Producing annual reports involves multiple complexities: data arrives from numerous sources, requiring coordination across departments and various data types — from flat files and databases to company strategies and auditor opinions. The process demands extensive footnote reports, multiple revisions and managerial approvals. All of this is still done manually in most companies, despite substantial finance-transformation projects — particularly problematic for group companies with multiple consolidation levels and complex approval chains.
The procedure
SAP has offered Disclosure Management since 2011 — an Enterprise Performance Management tool enabling a timely, accurate and risk-free financial close by managing the production, filing and publication of financial statements and reports.
Timely, accurate, risk-free
Timely — implementation creates a template report with integrated workflows; reference fields replace static amounts, reducing repetitive manual work. Accurate — integrated data tools automatically feed financial tables from SAP and non-SAP systems, eliminating manual entry errors. Risk-free — reports consist of independent 'chapters' with defined workflows and flexible authorisation, and system versioning preserves all changes for recovery or verification.
User-friendly
A Microsoft add-on integrates with Office tools, so users continue familiar workflows while accessing Disclosure Management within Word. The solution reduces manual effort in creating complex, multi-source documents while maintaining progress history and workflow tracking — and integrates with SAP BPC and SAP Group Reporting.
