July 9th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
You’ll have to wait until Sunday to see if Spain can win the ‘real’ World Cup but in the meantime, they have definitely won the world cup in sustainability scorecards. Thanks to my pal Alejandro at the Spanish AECA, I have now been alerted to the availability of Spain’s online sustainability scorecards (driven by XBRL) that you can find here. They are definitely worth a look… Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Analytics, Sustainability, Taxonomies, XBRL | View Comments
July 9th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
The SEC Data guy recently referred to the fact that some 500 companies have added 13,000 extension tags to the US-GAAP taxonomy as an example of crowdsourcing. But what we really need to reduce the number of extension tags being created is somewhere to do some ‘crowdsuggesting’.
What I mean is that if there was a central hub for crowdsuggesting extension tags then maybe they would find their way into the taxonomy a bit quicker and help prevent you creating your own extension tag when it’s very similar to someone else’s (that you have no knowledge of). Using this kind of hub you could also vote for an existing extension and bump it up the taxonomy inclusion ladder (if you get my drift).
In fact what we should do is have an extension ‘lookup’ feature in XBRL report writers that says ‘Hey before you add this extension tag to your taxonomy let me check that someone else hasn’t extended in a similar way before’.
Or maybe we already do and I’ve been drinking too much cider again.
Posted in Taxonomies, XBRL | View Comments
July 1st, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Those of us who have been around the business intelligence (BI) space for a while will be familiar with the old mantra – ‘one version of the truth’. What this primarily refers to is the problem of data consistency when storing data in the mess of separate spreadsheet files used for managing analysis and reporting in most businesses. One version of the truth means using a database for storing the BI data (in so-called ‘fact’ tables) and then sitting the spreadsheets (or spreadsheet-like report views) on top of this single server-based data repository for data presentation and manipulation at the desktop. Pretty simple concept. So what’s this got to do with XBRL taxonomies? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: spreadsheet
Posted in Analytics, Taxonomies, XBRL | View Comments
June 25th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Many of you who have followed the progress of XBRL for over a decade are probably wondering: when is it going to be used to deliver a key benefit that was identified right from the start – improved control over internal reporting? Today we are stuck on compliance and control looks a long way off, let alone communication. What’s holding back the use of XBRL for internal reporting? Well I think I know the answer. It’s taxonomies or more precisely taxonomy shock. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Control, Taxonomies, XBRL | View Comments
June 13th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
I should have thought of this before but developing taxonomies doesn’t have to take years and involve international committees. Anyone can do it.
So let’s develop a World Cup taxonomy. For example…
Key fact is ‘goal’ and elements are:
match e.g. England vs. USA
scorer e.g. Gerrard
team e.g. England
What else can we add? Time? Goalkeeper? Penalty/Non-Penalty? Stage of competition?
Taxonomies don’t have to be hard or have thousands of elements or be all about finance.
Tags: World Cup
Posted in Taxonomies, XBRL | View Comments
March 17th, 2010 by Greg Rohan - Chief of Staff
After recently attending a South by Southwest panel “Data is Money: How Geeks are Changing Finance”, I realized there was a high level of groupthink in regards to how technology and XBRL can empower investors to make better financial decisions. From the panel, questions from the attending audience, and the twitter comments (#datamoney) posted during the session, it was clear to me that XBRL is often dismissed or misunderstood as a potential solution for current issues regarding data transparency. A few key points were raised by the panelists in this discussion in regards to this new mandate that need to be clarified and, in my opinion, discussed Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: SXSW, Transparency
Posted in Analytics, Investors, Taxonomies | View Comments
January 27th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
When I saw the SEC Climate Portal on a Google search results page, I mistakenly thought this was the US S.E.C.’s rather than the Singapore Environment Council’s climate change portal. But I wonder how long it will be before we do see an S.E.C. climate portal? Given the increasing interest in the potential impact of climate change on businesses worldwide and item 2 on the agenda for ‘The Sunshine Act’ meeting on Jan. 27, 2010:
Item 2: The Commission will consider a recommendation to publish an interpretive release to provide guidance to public companies regarding the Commission’s current disclosure requirements concerning matters relating to climate change. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: climate change
Posted in Taxonomies, XBRL | View Comments
January 26th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
In a recent post It is NOT different this time, and XBRL will not avoid the coming crisis, author Daniel Roberts quotes Dennis Santiago, CEO of Institutional Risk Analytics, as saying: “bottom line is that as long as people are allowed to create opacity on purpose in finance these problems will resurface from time to time.” Something that strikes me as worth reflecting on. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Transparency
Posted in Taxonomies, XBRL | View Comments
January 11th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
If you are a newly hired financial reporting specialist at Megacorp Inc. you might soon feel that you’re on a production line, a constantly cranking supply chain responding to a never ending demand chain. One way to avoid this ‘Model T’ effect is to build an hour or so into your week/month to apply the taxonomy of reflection, a useful model recently proposed by Peter Pappas, who is clearly a reflective practitioner himself. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Taxonomies | View Comments
December 11th, 2009 by Emily Huang - Co-founder & VP, Business Technology
On December 10th, the SEC announced the release of a draft 2010 Risk/Return taxonomy and some sample instance documents with the “rendered” reports for public review.
The 2010 Mutual Fund Risk/Return Summary Taxonomy has been developed as an update to the 2008 Mutual Fund Risk/Return Summary Taxonomy. The updates provided in this release have been developed primarily to Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: instance document, Mutual Fund, Risk/Return, Taxonomy
Posted in Mutual Fund, Taxonomies, XBRL | View Comments