Some time back I posted on the use of new platforms (e.g. iPad, iPhone) for delivering corporate reporting so it’s good to see that someone else is picking up this theme. In Is the iPad the future of corporate reporting, Richard Simpson, a bizdev director at a UK-based design agency, has this to say about XBRL and the iPad:
It’s fair to say that app development will drive the market for i-Pads, but it’s not unreasonable to envisage paid for applications that use programmes like XBRL to generate content and provide real time comparative corporate and annual reports. This evolving information could remove the traditional ‘annual snapshot’ from the equation, replacing it with more and more frequent updates.
Ignoring the minor quibble of ‘programmes like XBRL to generate content’ - XBRL is not a programme and nor does it generate content, it contextualizes data – the point of more regular updates is well-taken. The big problem with the annual reporting paradigm is it’s focus on rear-view review of stuff that’s already happened. Truly transparent reporting has to be more continuous and that requires regular feeds to handheld devices – like the iPad.
Transparency is not an annual event, it’s a continuous process. Back in 2007, Tomorrow’s Company put it like this:
Adequate communication with stakeholders can no longer be achieved by publishing a single report each year. Investors are already used to receiving information in a variety of different forms throughout the year. Through the use of the Internet companies are now building similar ongoing relationships with other groups of stakeholders. Investors receive quarterly announcements, ad hoc briefings, and the detailed reports required by different stock exchanges.
The iPad article goes on to say…
But before we condemn print to the archives, it’s likely that it will always have a place with some stakeholders, albeit a slightly different role in the future. Personally, I believe report design will be led by the online requirement and print will support overall communications in the form of summary reports that supplement the full online version. I also think digital reports will become more sophisticated, focusing separately on the needs of different audiences – shareholders, investors, employees, customers, suppliers etc.
What we have to accept in the age of the Internet is that printed annual reports have value only as aesthetic artefacts. Literally the book of the year for the subject company. The future is near real-time, interactive reports, online and accessible directly or via an API, that leverage an agreed cross-industry data standard like XBRL. The role of today’s annual report is as tomorrow’s collector’s item – a relic of the past.
