Taking the Long View on XBRL

I've mentioned it before and it bears repeating: Hitachi Consulting's "Data Interactive" XBRL blog is well worth a look. The in-house experts and guest bloggers represent a who's who of XBRL experts and the context is extremely useful.

A July 14 posting, for example, presents a 23-step buying guide for XBRL software. Another July posting features an interview with Dominic Jones, who writes the IR Web Report blog and serves as a principal of a Canada-based stakeholder communications firm. That interview, the first part in particular, raised some interesting and potentially troubling questions about the investor relations (IR) community's readiness to adopt XBRL and to respond to its impacts. For example, IR professionals are likely to start fielding many more questions about technical accounting decisions once XBRL filing officially begins. Are they ready to handle those questions? Additionally, Jones expects analysts to turn their attention (and their questions) to less quantifiable topics, such as strategy and talent. Is your company prepared to handle those sorts of questions from analysts?