Institute For The Future

Freeing the Flow of Business Information with XBRL

I live in a city ruled by a man who made a fortune recently estimated worth $20 billion by easing the flow of financial information about businesses.

 

What Bloomberg did for markets though, pales in comparison to what is coming down the pipe as a result of technologies like eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) that will expand, speed, and automate the reporting of tremendous amounts of business information. One example worth taking a look at is how the Korean Technology Stock Exchange (KOSDAQ) is using XBRL to standardize and publish financial information. See a quick demo.

 

This is a great example of an open standard displacing proprietary standards. But more importantly, its a great opportunity to improve flows of information within companies, and better synchronize them with external flows - to/from suppliers, customers and analysts.