Lora Bentley spoke with Wilson So, the director of the XBRL Business Unit at Hitachi America, Ltd. So co-authored the book, "XBRL for Dummies."

Bentley: How did you approach the book? XBRL is very technical.

So: It's very simple. We tried to stay away from any of the technical discussions around XBRL because at the time the idea for the book was conceived, it was too geeky, too technical, and very hard for people to understand.

I like to use this analogy. Say you're driving a car. You don't need to know about the timing operations of the internal combustion engine. Or, if you like mechanical watches, you can appreciate the beauty, the intricacy of the mechanisms, but you don't necessarily have to know how to take it apart and put it back together unless you are a watch restorer.

So when we wrote the book, that was the idea -- to write about XBRL as to how it's used or how it could be used in different industry sectors.

Bentley: Did you focus on particular sectors then?

So: No, it's quite general. We don't focus on any particular industry because XBRL can be applied to everything from oil and gas to banking to insurance to general commercial concerns. There's no need to focus on any one sector.

Bentley: How can companies benefit from XBRL?

So: Well, one area is in compliance. The Securities and Exchange Commission is requiring companies to file certain financials using XBRL. Another is that it can be used internally to manage company performance or strategic planning.

What that means is you can get financial data -- and probably the data that companies submit to the SEC is just a subset of all the data companies collect -- from different business systems. And they can do a lot more analysis and slicing and dicing of the data to manage the performance of its various businesses or various verticals and geographical areas that they play in.

They can also integrate operational data with the financial data and create taxonomies -- there can even be specific taxonomies to a company. They can combine operational and financial data to give them a better view into the future in terms of planning.

Bentley: Can you give me an example?

So: Say you are a bottling company. Coke is your client and you may want to know what the sales are for six packs of 7Up in a certain store or certain area. This is operational data that is important for your planning purposes. You can combine that with financial data like revenue from that area, and you can get a better view of how to plan your business going forward and manage it in real time.