Why consider an IBM Controller Health Check? 
By Mark Whitney
IBM Controller sits at the heart of group reporting for a lot of finance teams. It’s usually set up carefully at the start, then it gets busy. Years of month-ends, new entities, quick fixes and changing team members and it’s fair to ask: is it still set up the way it should be?
That’s what a Controller Health Check is for. And here I’ve written why I think it’s worth doing, what you get, and how to get the most out of it.
Why get a health check?
As an IBM Gold Partner, Aramar has supported lots of Controller customers over the years, from teams who’ve run it for a long time to those who are brand new to the product.
A health check is our way of passing that experience on to you. Whatever stage you’re at, you will be able to answer these three simple questions:
- Where are my risks?
- What do I need to prioritise?
- What am I overlooking that I should be taking advantage of?
What does a health check produce?
You are provided with an extensive report: a proper document you can keep, share and (we recommend) come back to. Split into three sections, each is written to help different groups of people in your business.
| Section | Who it’s for | What’s in it |
| Executive summary | Senior management | A short overview and commentary on the key findings |
| Recommendations | The team that owns Controller (for example, Group Finance) | Short and long term suggestions you can filter and prioritise |
| Detail | Your Controller admin team (and us) | Our full findings and an audit trail |
- Executive summary
This one’s for senior management, so we keep it short. A brief narrative, then our commentary on anything important we found.
- Recommendations
This section is for the team owning the output of the product, typically Group Finance. We split our suggestions into short term and long term, and set them out in a table so you can filter/analyse by impact, priority, effort and dependency. That makes it easy to see what to tackle first and what needs to wait for something else.
- Detail
This is where we record exactly what we found. For example:
- Which settings are leading to a particular outcome?
- What’s missing?
- Are there any error messages?
Think of it as an audit trail. It’s for your Controller administration team and us, so if you have questions or want to follow up on anything in the report, the evidence is all there.
How to use the report
The report captures our experience of Controller in one document that you can refer back to whenever you need to. And you don’t need to be an existing Aramar customer to get one.
Our aim is simple: we want you to know where you stand on how Controller has been designed, how it’s being maintained and how it’s being used. When IBM Controller is central to your reporting, it’s worth knowing it’s in good shape.
If you are our customer already, a health check can help the customer success team guide you on quick wins (small changes that can make fast gains), bigger issues (these are prioritised and require focus) and a roadmap (which keeps us all on track for updates and improvements).
Ready to find out how your Controller setup is doing?
If you’d like to know where your risks are, what to prioritise and what you might be missing, get in touch using the form below and we’ll talk you through a Controller Health Check.