Migrating from Cognos Consolidator to Cognos Controller 8.2

by Maximilien de Chestret, Product Manager, Cognos Inc.

Introduction

Currently a Cognos Consolidator customer? You'll greatly benefit from migrating to Cognos Controller 8.2.

Controller 8.2 follows the same application strategy and principles as user-friendly Consolidator. It's finance-owned, requiring no arcane programming languages or costly IT support. Controller 8.2 features built-in financial intelligence, and is easy to set up and configure. It puts you in charge and provides the flexibility to allow customization in line with unique needs and requirements. Incorporating Consolidator features and capabilities, Controller 8.2 is built on an advanced platform to deliver richer functionality and greatly improve reporting and analysis.

Controller 8.2 improvements over Consolidator are described below, according to consolidation process phase.

Data Preparation

Date stamps on company structures

There is no limit on how many company structures you can create for operational or legal follow-up in Controller 8.2. With date stamps, you can:

• Handle budgets and results in parallel using alternative structures.
• Prepare for forthcoming changes (like creating a new company for a future period).
• Define complex corporate structures to connect companies to more than one group.
• Run simulations.

Valid counterpart

In the company structure, you can specify whether a company should be included in the counterpart registry. Controller 8.2 will only show “valid” counter companies in data entry, reducing the risk of reporting errors.

Account structure

You'll see account structure as a tree structure with summary levels, facilitating structural overviews.

Security groups and user rights

Controller 8.2 supports centralized IT environments. Security groups are easy to monitor and maintain. Using a tree structure, your administrator can easily set user rights on functional (i.e., menus) as well as data elements (i.e., period, legal entity)

Data collection

Cognos 8 Controller supports several data collection methods that allow incorporation of financial data, non-financial data (headcounts, volumes, etc.) from other systems or Excel spreadsheets. You can import data directly from Excel, third party data sources, or by using system functions; data is processed in batches triggered by a defined event.

Other Controller 8.2 improvements include:

• Support for linked forms
• Direct link to the acquisition register
• Ability to check why a cell is locked
• Support for mandatory comments
  
• Document attachment during data entry (e.g., to allow users to attach invoices)
• Defining hyperlinks to external information
• Reverse journals within a chosen period

You can configure Controller 8.2 to handle multiple submissions during the same reporting period, letting you report sales flashes or reconcile intercompany transactions before the rest of the data is submitted.

Data processing

Controller's built-in financial intelligence saves time and increases report quality. New functions and enhancements greatly improve data processing. In addition to expected functionality for currency conversion, inter-company elimination, and built-in acquisition register, Controller 8.2 offers you:

• Split method option for sub-consolidating units
• Support for structural changes
• Automatic eliminations can be combined as needed
• Automatic entries link to specific consolidation types

Consolidation

Controller 8.2 runs consolidation in batches when triggered by events such as completion of reporting from subsidiaries, when data has changed, or when a currency rate has been updated. And you can always force a complete consolidation—for example, to reflect changes in consolidation rules.

Validation

Audit and Compliance

Controller 8.2 provides enhanced support for accountability and internal control, featuring:

• Validation and approval of journals
• Security groups for import specifications and lookup tables
• Built-in reports for tracking and validating imported data, enabling users to check for change of signs, changes to calculations, and so on
• Approval of company and group journals
  

Standard reports

Controller 8.2 offers several standard reports new to Consolidator users: New reports provide: options for analyzing acquisition values, including a calculation of good will; a trial balance with drill-down functionality for all system structures; a group balance sheet with a breakdown of companies, drill-down into business areas, switch views, show product totals, and much more.

Other new Controller 8.2 functions and features include:

• Selection of optional currency in the report with journals in columns
• Several new standard reports to analyze acquisition calculations
• Query of amount in reports and journals
• Additional information in standard reports (e.g., batch IDs)

Reporting and analysis

Controller 8.2 offers you a wide range of options for reporting and analysis. It includes more than 200 standard reports, as well as a report generator for company-specific reporting. The Cognos platform integrates solutions for group reporting and decision support, greatly simplifying the process of creating professional statutory and operational reports.

Report Generator

Report generator is structured, yet flexible. A wizard helps you define axes, rows, and columns. It automatically creates layouts in Microsoft Excel, providing broad capability for report formatting and logic definition for KPIs, variance reports, and other tasks. Custom reports—for a variety of periods, groups, companies, complete with auto-updated charts and diagrams—are a snap.

Reporting and analysis with Cognos 8 BI

Controller 8.2 supports integrated output to Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, letting you create analyses and reports of all kinds in a single, highly flexible drag-and-drop environment, including standardized company business reports, production reports, dashboards, and ad-hoc queries. Cognos 8 BI scales to support hundreds—even thousands—of users. These capabilities take pressure off your IT department and accelerate time-to-reporting.

System architecture

Controller 8.2 is a Web-based solution using modern industry standards to help our customers become the world's best decision-makers. It's multi-tiered, capable of handling large numbers of concurrent users.

Key Takeaways

• As a Cognos Consolidator customer, you'll reap great benefit by migrating to Controller 8.2.
• Controller 8.2 incorporates familiar Consolidator features and capabilities, but goes far beyond to deliver richer functionality in data preparation, data processing, consolidation, validation, and—especially—reporting and analysis.
• Controller 8.2 features built-in financial intelligence, and is easily set up and configured.
• Controller 8.2 is finance-owned, requiring no arcane programming languages or costly IT support.
• Controller 8.2 puts you in charge and provides the flexibility to allow customization in line with your company's unique needs and requirements.

More Information For more information on Controller 8.2 migration, please contact Maximilien de Chestret, Senior Product Manager, Cognos Inc.