The SmartPros newsletter carried a report today called “XBRL Top Tech Trend, Says PwC Forecast.” XRBL is the “eXtensible Business Reporting Language” standard and is “an electronic format for simplifying the flow of financial statements, performance reports, accounting records, and other financial information between software programs.” The idea is that XRBL will be used as a consistent format for business reporting which “will streamline how companies prepare and disseminate financial data, and how analysts, regulators, and investors review and interpret it. As a result, XBRL will save time and money when information consumers within and outside of a company analyze complex data. XBRL is a standard based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and is supported by a consortium of over 200 corporations, financial markets, accounting firms and regulators.”
“The effect that XBRL will have on the business community will be more significant than the transition from paper and pencil analysis of financial information to the use of electronic spreadsheets,” said Mike Willis, founding chairman of XBRL International.
The PwC report also identifies real time business intelligence systems displayed on digital dashboards, evolution of business integration technologies, real time supply chain event management with the growing use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, and expanded use of XML as other trends to watch.