Those of you familiar with your Roald Dahl will know that BFG stands for ‘Big Friendly Giant’ (shame on you for thinking that ‘F’ stood for something different). To my knowledge, Charlie Hoffman has never called XBRL a BFG of any kind, but I rather like the cuddly nickname. Anyway, Charlie is set to enlighten us about Digital Financial Reporting (DFR) on his blog and proposes in his kick-off post that:
Just like the change from film to digital photography meant big changes to what type of cameras were made, the workflow of creating a photography, and the skills needed to be a photographer; changing to digital financial reporting will mean change.
I’m no David Bailey, or Fran Lebowitz for that matter, but I have some thoughts on this photographic analogy.
Today’s paper financial reports are rather like Polaroids: a quick snapshot that is handy to pin on a wall but that’s about it. Sharing digital snaps killed Land’s innovation (although it’s back as a retro/nostalgia buy) and sharing reports, what we call ‘social BI’, will help sound the final death knell for paper reports.
Today’s paper reports are lovingly constructed, with some bizarre recipe of arcane chemical formulas, like old 35mm film developed in a darkroom. DFR reports will be complied largely automatically by apps designed to collect, connect and publish online data with little or no human intervention. Hasta La Vista Excel macro king!
Today’s paper reports are compiled like composing a photo on a manual SLR – lots of twiddling of knobs (i.e. Excel spreadsheets) and twisting of focusing rings (i.e. BI views) so no-one quite remembers where the data came from or how it got to be where and what it is. Tomorrow’s reports have built-in provenance rather like today’s generation of ‘unmad’ UK cows.
Today’s paper reports are stored in files – the equivalent of photograph albums – and then shelved. They smell kind of musty and eventually get covered in coffee stains and squashed muffin bits. Tomorrow’s reports are Mr. Clean, always fresh and living a vibrant digital life constantly available for reuse and widgetizing. Cloudsourced hamburger meat for the cloudcrowd – a new generation of online information consumers for whom a mashup is an even tastier proposition than a fryup – to shape into whatever they want.
I hereby invite more photographic analogies to enhance my lame examples. But please. Don’t be sending me any of your photos.
