Think globally, think XBRL!
In September 2008, Rivet and Thomson Reuters began working on an XBRL-related project for the Reuters Fundamentals product. The project released earlier this month and the first stage of delivery, handling Japanese XBRL is now in production.
Reuters Fundamentals is created and maintained by an experienced data collection team that includes data on:
- Over 47,500 active companies, representing over 99% of world market capitalization
- Coverage of all constituents of all major indices
- Over 15,800 inactive companies
- 160+ exchanges in 107 countries
- 25 years of history for US companies, and 12 years for non-US companies
Some of the markets covered by Thomson Reuters have already adopted XBRL as the standard for financial reporting, and other markets are soon to follow. Thomson Reuters has an opportunity to streamline the data collection process with XBRL being center stage.
Rivet helps to build a bridge between traditional business intelligence and XBRL
During the process of creating a solution to assist Thomson Reuters, we have learned a great deal about how different each market could be in regards to the financial information. XBRL as a standard has provided a framework to enable financial transparency and financial data integrity, but to fully realize the benefits that XBRL can bring to the investors, software vendors and solution providers will continue to fine-tune the traditional processes already in place and invent new ways to best utilize XBRL.
With XBRL, financial data can be verified and validated before loading into any downstream systems for processing; the ‘quality’ of the information can certainly be highly enhanced. Also, the level of human resources previously required to get the data into loadable format is no longer necessary. I am not saying that all human interaction is eliminated, but with the incorporation of XBRL and automated, systematic processing, the human resources can be used to turn the data into valuable information. Delivering the financial information on a timely basis with lower costs and with greater accuracy is now an achievable goal.
Enhancing the Financial Information Ecosystem is “technically” simple
Thomson Reuters plays a very important role in the financial information ecosystem. Working with Rivet to add XBRL support to the complex information processing was not a huge “technical” challenge. Rivet brought to the table over 100,000 hours of collective XBRL experience and wealth of products/tools for supporting XBRL parsing, rendering. Under Thomson Reuters superb guidance, the project has moved from a conceptual model to a web-delivered solution in a short period of time. Since the first few markets the application supports are non-US, the project also gave Rivet a wider exposure to how XBRL was implemented in various global markets.
It was a valuable and enjoyable project for Rivet. Collaboration was formed and strengthened with each party walking away with a better understanding of how XBRL can be best used to benefit the investors.
Tags: Analytics, XBRL Loader
