XBRL Fuels State-of-the-Art Financial Reporting

It may be a bit premature to announce that traditional financial statements are obsolete. But it is clear that they are assuming a new lesser role in the world. Now, it's all about data. Data that is useful in analyzing companies and making decisions. XBRL is playing an important role in making useful data available for investors and analysts.

A common misconception about XBRL is that it is simply a way of recasting financial statements into another format. That is totally missing the point. Every data point that is tagged using XBRL carries with it metadata that makes that data point understandable on its own. Therefore data can be pulled from financial statements or any other source and placed in a tool that is useful for analysis, all on an automated basis.

The most innovative companies are taking the steps to make data available to their investing public in ways that maximise the utility of the data. They are doing this in the Investor Relations Section of their websites.

For example, Agnico Eagle, a frequent winner in the CPA Canada Corporate Reporting Contest, includes an Interactive Analyst Center in its site at http://www.agnicoeagle.com/en/Pages/default.aspx found by clicking Financial and Operating Data.

The Analyst Center sets out  an array of data that can be downloaded in Excel format for further analysis. The data is populated by the XBRL data filed with the SEC.

Other examples can be found at Dupont: http://investors.dupont.com/investor-relations/filings-and-reports/reconciliations-and-other-data/default.aspx > Interactive Analyst Center,

EMC: http://www.emc.com/corporate/investor-relations/index.htm > Stock Information > Interactive Analyst Center,

And Salesforce.com: http://investor.salesforce.com/about-us/investor/financials/default.aspx > Interactive Analyst Center.

The Interactive Analyst Center is the brainchild of Virtua Research. As XBRL data become more readily available, we will see more such tools. And more examples of the usefulness of XBRL.