How can you turn the U.S. SEC eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) mandate’s requirements into an opportunity when making process improvements to mply? Implement an XBRL-enhanced document management strategy as part of your internal rporate filing workflow which will both boost mpliance and save money.

Strategies for Suess

Document management is based on applying the principles of structured ntent — documents that have been chunked into meaningful mponent parts and tagged in a systematic fashion. In the case of the rporate financial reporting process, the structure now being applied to financial ntent is XBRL, the financial XML standard that promises to transform, and perhaps revolutionize, how mpanies create and use their financial information to meet business objectives. With the SEC mandating the use of XBRL, now is the perfect time to take advantage of these two nverging industry best practices. Its standardized structure makes the application of document management systems possible for the rporate acunting sector, whereas in the past, the lack of structure had hindered the adoption of document management strategies in this domain.

Document management workflows have long been known to speed the delivery of rporate information materials, improve quality and auracy of ntent across the global enterprise, increase staff efficiency with ntent, and rce publishing sts. IT departments have been waiting a long time for acunting departments to open up the kimono to document management practices for the sake of improving archiving, ntent reuse, and data management. Going forward, suessful anizations will apply document management practices to help streamline their rporate reporting processes.

Outsourcing vs. ‘In-Sourcing’ XBRL

Most CFOs and external reporting managers will probably opt for the short term fix of ‘outsourcing’ XBRL filing requirements to financial publishers. nsidering the time nstraints, this is a valid approach for the first ~ 500 filers who are scurrying to mply by June 2009. This ‘outsourcing’ approach puts the burden of tagging auracy onto a third party and simply adds yet another service fee to the st of the rporate filing process without garnering any real internal benefits to the anization. However, in some cases, the filing process must be handled internally due to the mplexity of reporting requirements. Bringing the tagging effort inside, or ‘in-sourcing,’ initially offers the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the technology as well as to examine the benefits of bringing XBRL-based structured ntent reuse into the rporate reporting process.

The more adventurous acuntants might opt to ‘in-source’ the tagging effort and assign an external reporting manager with the role of expert tagger, using one of the many XBRL-tagging tools that have cropped up in the past few months to fill the gap. However, after the first few filing cycles, it bemes apparent that both of these approaches simply increase the burden on the rporate reporting department’s limited resources and are just other versions of ‘cutting and pasting’ ntent from one application to another. The key to suess is automation — the manual ‘tagging’ process must beme an automated process that is integrated with the existing rporate reporting workflows.

The sources for the filing’s ntent can be nnected directly to the rporate report generation workflow. Backend acunting and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems now let users export primary financial statements to XBRL. Also, the mmentary — management’s notes and discussions or footnotes — are easily stored in ntent management systems that now support the storage and retrieval of XBRL ntent. If your current acunting systems do not have an XBRL export function, there are many fully-automated XML mapping tools on the market today that can easily plug-in and create the required XBRL ntent. Document management systems nnect all these sources of ntent for filing creation into a secure llaborative workflow.

Aside from the filing’s primary author and gatekeeper who is usually the External Report Manager, imagine how many ‘touches’ it takes to get a filing ready for submission to the SEC. The filing process requires review and mment from multiple parties who review, reuse, and add value to the filing document:

•  C-levels (CEO, CFO, O)
•  Internal Audit
•  Legal
•  rporate mmunications
•  Investor Relations
•  Even your Webmaster

With an XBRL-enhanced document management system, acunting departments can mpose mplex filing documents from multiple data sources, monitor the status of the review cycle, check in and check out the document, refresh data from the source when necessary, track changes, and enable reuse of the ntent for various publishing and investor mmunication needs in a nnected, secure, distributed manner.

XBRL: nnecting the Dots

XBRL is inherently a nnective technology. As the document is assembled and circulates for review, it remains nnected not just to the sources of the ntent (acunting systems, document archives, ERP databases) but to additional resources that enable the reviewers to make informed decisions. For example, the U.S. GAAP taxonomy mes with a reference linkbase that nnects ncepts to their Financial Acunting Standards Board (FASB) authoritative literature. So, if the reader is unsure of the definition of ‘Fair Value Assessment’ as described in the document, they will be able to click through to the most current online documentation on the subject. This same capability uld nnect the reader to the mpany’s Acunting Policies and Procres manuals and take the reader directly to the section that explains how the mpany interprets the FASB ruling on the ic.

Why Now?

If you look across your anization, you will probably see many examples of document management, structured ntent authoring, and XML already at work today. Marketing, technical publications, and sales and training departments have long been strong proponents and avid practitioners of document management systems. Managing manuals, datasheets, parts catalogs, safety and training ntent, and other re publications in a structured fashion helps to substantially rce sts. In other areas, key documents such as proposals, RFP responses, sales llateral, and ntracts that directly impact revenue growth are most likely already inrporated into a document management system. Document management systems enable ntent reuse by presales and sales departments helping to improve win rates by allowing sales personnel to aess a library of existing, proven RFP responses and standard ntent mponents to assemble custom tailored proposals and rrespondence. These same principles of document management are well documented and ready to be applied to financial ntent.

Now is the time to apply these principles to the rporate filing process and reap the benefits across multiple departments. ntent tagged and stored in a document management system can be reused securely on your investor relations web; it can be securely reviewed and revised by internal audit review, legal, and rporate mmunications prior to filing; and best of all, the ntent can be updated and reused in the next filing cycle mplete with version ntrol and change management.

Leveraging the structure inherent in XBRL documents enables you to take advantage of recent advances in ntent management and publishing systems to create an end-to-end rporate reporting solution that includes authoring, reviewing, publishing, translation, and management of financial information.

With resources and dollars tight, it makes good sense to take advantage of the timing of the SEC mandate to review your rporate reporting strategies. Going forward, it is key to have effective document management strategies in place for financial reporting, so take advantage of this perfect storm — the requirement to mply with the mandate and the opportunities of structured ntent presented by the advent of the XBRL standard — and realize a measurable impact for your anization now.

Diane Mueller has been actively involved in the development efforts of the XBRL standard for the past nine years. She is the Canadian representative to the XBRL International Steering mmittee, serves as Vice Chair of that body, and chairs the XBRL Working Groups on Rendering and Software Interoperability. She currently serves as vice president of XBRL development at JustSystems, the largest independent software vendor in Japan and a worldwide leader in XML and information management technologies. Learn more about JustSystems at http://www.justsystems.m, and ntact Diane at diane@justsystems.m.

About JustSystems and XBRL

Along with the SEC, the International Acunting Standards mmittee (IASC) Foundation, XBRL International, and many other anizations worldwide, JustSystems has been aggressively supporting the development of the XBRL standard and integrating the interactive data format into its xfy platform. JustSystems’ software solutions work with XBRL to enable a richer way of working with and utilizing information, leveraging our technology around information search and retrieval, semantics, document management, and data integration. To learn more about how to aelerate the creation, quality, and nsistency of the financial ntent that your anization produces and nsumes today or to participate in the JustSystems beta program, please visit .