Transformation of Digital Reporting – the Role of XBRL
“XBRL should be on everyone’s radar.” So says Ken Krupa, CTO of MarkLogic, a privately held “unicorn” big data analytics firm in a blog post this week. “Corporate reporting cannot remain primarily a paper-based* exercise in a digital age. As annual reports are a key part of any company’s understanding of its financial situation, moving all corporate reporting to a standardised digital format will improve transparency, and facilitate better analysis, comparison and accessibility.”
Using “NoSQL” databases such as those provided by MarkLogic is one way that business experts can control the design and aggregation of reports, whether inside a regulator, or inside the enterprise.
PS: Think that PDF or plain HTML, Excel or Word are “digital” formats? Think again. Digitised means structured data. These formats, by contrast, are really just paper under glass.
