Back in July 2009, Ernst and Young UK put out a useful paper called Top 10 XBRL readiness challenges, which I’d like to revisit for a moment. Number 9 in their list was ‘Visualizing the data’. But on closer inspection what they were specifically referring to was presenting the data in a document-centric format and initiatives to help do that e.g. iXBRL. Isn’t it time we moved on from this document-centric fixation?
Visualizing the data points that XBRL provides is not just about rendering it as a document. This approach merely extends the old world of annual reporting moving it from printed document to PDF online to XBRL data formatted to look like a PDF. Of course the conventional financial statement look-and-feel offers a format and comfort level that is not going to go away anytime soon. But the web 2.0 generation expects a lot more from ‘visualizing the data’ than just making it look like a PDF report.
Actually, what’s great about XBRL data is that it is not specifically designed to render in a report or document. Instead, the granularity of the data means it can be rendered visually in many different ways to help to communicate new information about the data. In this respect, iXBRL is a useful addition to the rendering toolbox but it’s addressing a ‘legacy’ need – document rather than data centricity.
Tags: iXBRL
