Around the world, many large mpanies that file financial information with regulators or ernment authorities are ming under pressure to repair the "last mile of finance." That phrase refers to the tasks that our between clarification of the trial balance; the validation of data from discrete sources; and the filing of 10-Ks, 10-Qs, or other disclosure documents with regulators such as the SEC.

Until now, it’s been easy to postpone the road repair. After all, basic statutory reporting chores always seemed to get acmplished with a bit of luck and brute force. Typically, many people joined together in a race to beat the clock. But with pressure now mounting for faster and easier aess to highly aurate financial information, CFOs and ntrollers might just nclude the time has me to face the glaring process inadequacies.

Just how bad uld it be? APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking in general acunting and reporting reveals marked performance gaps with time, talent and other resources squandered by many participating anizations. Take, for example, the number of days it takes to close the books and release financial results. The performers, who do better than 75 percent of all anizations surveyed, run the quarterly earnings urse in half the time it takes the bottom performers (15 days versus 30). As for releasing annual information, the performers move more than twice as fast as the bottom performers (19 days versus 45).

Expanding this view of relative performance, APQC has identified two groups that deserve aclades and one group that needs attention. The first group, described as the all-around performer group, includes survey participants who do better than 75 percent of peers when it mes to the number of days required to release earnings, both quarterly and annually, after all financial data nsolidations have been mpleted. The send-best performer group includes mpanies who do better than 75 percent of peers when releasing either quarterly or annual information. The laggards, who do worse than 75 percent of peers, have the slowest speed when it mes to releasing either or both quarterly or annual earnings.

The all-around performer group outshines the other two groups in terms of both staff productivity and sts related to the process of providing financial reporting. The all-around performers deploy just 1.2 full-time equivalents (FTEs) per $1 billion in revenue, and they spend just 16 cents per $1,000 of revenue to get the job done. The send-best performer group deploys 1.6 FTEs and spends 54 cents, respectively. The laggards are not only terribly slow in reporting results, they also need 10.3 FTEs and spend $1.09 to perform this very basic financial management chore.

XBRL as Catalyst for Change

When the SEC first floated the idea of requiring issuers of securities to file financial statements using XBRL, few CFOs immediately regnized an opportunity to justify investments in process improvements aimed at the last mile of finance.

Things started to gel about three years ago when the SEC began requiring the largest rporations to use XBRL when filing information. Mark Lelyo, Executive Director of rporate Financial Systems at Time Warner Inc., had this to say about the arrival of the XBRL mandate: "We had an added incentive to find a solution" to the slow and tedious financial reporting process.

The mpany implemented a software solution from an external vendor to ease the process of attaching XBRL tags to every data point and table in its financial statements filed with the SEC. Beyond meeting the SEC requirement, the mpany aimed to improve process auracy by moving away from what was essentially a manual financial close process. The objective was to provide information of the highest possible quality not just to the SEC but to financial journalists, banks, vendors, key strategic alliance partners and to the workforce.

Time Warner claims internal nsumers of its financial statements have since gained increased nfidence in the auracy and quality of its financial reporting. Process automation has helped ensure the nsistency and integrity of numbers and associated text on a repeatable basis.

A Final Word

Some CFOs will regard initiatives to improve the productivity of the financial reporting process as a mere tactical matter, one that can be readily addressed with quick fixes such as outsourcing XBRL tagging. But if you maintain too narrow of a focus, you may miss an opportunity that is undeniably strategic: meeting demands by key stakeholders for timely and useful performance information.