I’ve been exchanging emails with Mike Willis, a partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and currently Chairman of the XBRL International Steering Committee, about innovative possibilities stemming from collaboration between XBRL and SWIFT. Some of this has relevance to our conversations about mashups in preparation for the Innotribe Stream at SIBOS.

One of the things Mike shared with me was a description of PWC’s internal data platform that “provides 'collaborative mashups' and 'social analytics' “ for PWC staff. While this is an internal-to-PWC-only implementation (Mike says PWC has no interest in licensing or selling this platform to third parties), I think it serves as a good example of the value of mashups, how one firm went about building a platform of “mashable” data and models, and how and why its use spread exponentially within PWC despite little internal promotion and no training. This may help to spur ideas within the SWIFT community.

Here are some details:

PWCs data platform supports collaborative, consumer-driven reporting and analysis across a range of software tools including Microsoft Excel and Internet Explorer. PwC staff can quickly access, create, share, adjust analytical models, data and visualization alternatives in assessing disclosures from over 75,000 public companies around the world.

There has been little promotion of the data platform. It was started in spring 2008 via a guerilla marketing campaign initiated with an email to ten individuals. It is now used by over 65,000 PwC staff around the world. There were no traditional training courses, leadership driven emails, or internal marketing newsletters.

Instead, because of its value for collaboration and sharing of a wide range of data, analytics and visualization models, adoption was achieved by word of mouth and use across the firm -- not only has it increased analyst efficiency, it has also resulted in significant cost savings by allowing for sharing of data across lines of business.

Also important is that the data platform is flexible. It does not dictate reporting and analytical concepts. Instead, the data platform – which is based on XBRL and web services -- addresses interoperability of disparate systems based upon common information models, business rules, presentation concepts, etc. that are articulated in standardized taxonomies and executed across a wide range of software applications.

Standardization through an abstraction layer lets users create their own reporting concepts and enables collaboration on reporting and analytical concepts. Standardized 'widgets' or 'remote portlets' let users access, manage, create and share the intellectual property contained in the abstraction layer and access the aggregated data in the underlying warehouse and from other external sources. The widgets can be incorporated into any customized webpage, portal or software application, thereby enhancing the contextual relevance of the information for the individual user.

Picture the potential of having this kind of capability not just within the walls of a single firm, but within a powerful business community! And more and more countries are adopting XBRL for regulatory reporting. This means that increasingly publicly reported data would not have to be parsed and tagged after the fact – as PWC is doing with their vendor partner. As XBRL and other standards are increasingly applied to other publicly reported data, such as corporate actions and operational risk data, the possibilities increase.

And such a platform could also be extended to other data, such as – SWIFT performance data, or legal entity data, or maybe information related to clearing and settlement instructions – there are all sorts of potentials that can streamline both bank and corporate operations, reduce cost and risk, improve efficiency and collaboration and introduce the opportunity for new products and services.