The wire-bound collection of spreadsheet reports, by division, reporting entity and management segment all enclosed in a bland stiff cover is the staple of corporate reporting. Finance professionals are accustomed to generating reports but assembling them into highly accessible and attractive documents is quite another matter.

The exception is the year-end process which culminates in the production of the glossy Annual Report and Accounts. In recent years new ‘disclosure management’ tools have helped the finance team co-ordinate the activities of multiple stakeholders in bringing together the major statutory disclosures of the year. These disclosure management tools have transformed the so called ‘Last Mile’ of finance, turning a time-consuming and error-prone process into a more streamlined, timely and controlled method.

Despite the success of the year-end process the same disciplines have not been widely applied to other
forms of regulatory and management reporting.

This brief paper discusses one option for disclosure management and how it is designed to support a collaborative approach to document production, enhance productivity and establish process visibility into the Last Mile of finance.