Exploring the Playbook 1: How do I ensure my organisation is ready to implement digital reporting?
XBRL International’s Regulatory Playbook is now available. It offers regulators an essential guide to planning and implementing an XBRL-based digital reporting framework, including key considerations and best practices drawn from international experience. To celebrate the launch, this series will dive into a few of the questions that regulators often ask themselves, and that the playbook helps to answer.
Digital reporting is a technological transformation, right? Well, yes – implementing XBRL will dramatically enhance how you collect and use regulatory data. But successful implementation needs much more than just getting the technical aspects right.
Unless implementing organisations are themselves ready for change, any kind of project can struggle. That’s just as true for digital reporting projects, which is where the Playbook comes in. Prepare the way effectively and you’ll create the foundation for a smooth and sustainable transition.
Critical steps explored in the Playbook include:
- Aligning with strategic objectives, positioning your project to win the support it needs.
- Defining clear, measurable goals and measurable KPIs, helping you achieve buy-in, track progress, and make continual improvements.
- Securing support and resources early, including funding, staff and technology. Critical here is support from senior leadership to drive momentum and confidence.
- Build a cross-functional project team with expertise in policy, IT and data analytics, plus the wider engagement that keeps a project connected to its stakeholders.
XBRL implementation should be as much a change management process as a technological project. In addition to organisational readiness, lasting success also requires significant investment in internal external capacity building, ongoing communication, and guidance and education materials. You’ll need to make critical design and policy decisions, and create an implementation strategy. And of course, you will need the right technical infrastructure. Read more in the Playbook here.
