Controller vs TM1 for Financial Consolidation

[gtonkin]

As I have no experience with Controller, I am hoping to leech some insight from some of you that do.

I have a prospect that has TM1 for Budgeting and Forecasting where we are consolidating about 23 companies into roughly 4 areas - three levels of consolidation i.e. Holding Company, Subs, Subs with Subs. For planning we obviously have the GL and Company structure at a simplified level to aid planning.

Actuals are provided using a "unified" chart of accounts, mapped in a data warehouse. These in turn feed TM1.

The question is really - is there any benefit in purchasing Controller, building the consolidation in Controller, feeding TM1 budgets to Controller for comparisons etc?

My immediate answer would be "No" as they have TM1 and it would be a matter of identifying the rules at a granular level to apply on Actuals rather than building yet another system which needs to be purchased, spec'ed, built tested maintained etc.

Does anyone have any insight into why extending the existing TM1 model would be a bad idea or why adding Controller would be a good idea?

Thanks in advance.

[declanr]

Controller can be a good choice for a big company with a complicated group structure that includes JVs and Associates in addition to a lot of intercompany trading etc because controller is designed to do Financial Consolidation and nothing else so as Accounting standards change it will be patched to accommodate that whereas a manually created system does not and requires manual development changes but what you've described sounds like a fairly simple structure.

And from another perspective Controller is fairly simple to set up and get running but I have seen a number of consultancies take a very long time to do this because they haven't used it before and/or don't really understand the underlying accounting principles. If your company don't have any experienced controller resource and you feel you are capable of providing the solution in TM1 then that in itself is a reason to not target the prospect with that line of sale. However it's quite likely that the prospect will get quotes from other consultancies as well; that will offer Controller or another out of the box Consolidation tool and a lot of companies tend to prefer a tool designed specifically for the purpose than a customised tool/solution.

It's also not just a case of technical ability to produce the model in one system or another. I know as a customer I would be concerned if a consultancy were to try and sell me a financial consolidation tool but didn't have experience in it; a lot of customers from my experience tend to want proof of accountancy experience/qualifications in addition to development skills.

And it's worth noting that when it comes to the Audit time of year auditors are more likely to trust the numbers that come out of an IFRS accredited software than one that has just been created for your company; so if you go down the TM1 route you need to make sure all numbers are clearly traceable (for auditors who are likely to have no knowledge of what TM1 is or how it works.)

In summary I would say Controller is a pretty good tool and offers some nice reporting features (graphical org structure representation etc) that you are unlikely to be able to reproduce in TM1 but at the end of the day simple financial consolidation is by no means difficult for competent TM1 developers with an understanding of finance; so I would say it just comes down to personal preference from your point of view and the customer's point of view.

[gtonkin]

Thank you for your fast and detailed response Declan, really appreciate it.
I think the biggest concern for me as a developer and as customer would be around the compliance aspect i.e. IFRS and Audit areas.