Wednesday, December 21, 2016

ESMA Chooses iXBRL as Single Electronic Format



Earlier today, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) announced that starting in 2020, all publicly listed companies in the EU that report consolidated IFRS financial statements must provide them in Inline XBRL. The decision was made primarily because the use of Inline XBRL enables a single document to be both machine-readable and human-readable. 
Steven Maijoor, ESMA Chair, said “Financial reports are crucial for a full understanding of a company’s situation and moving to electronic reporting will facilitate analysis, comparability and accessibility of issuers’ financial statements."
"We believe that the vast pool of free, structured financial information that will emerge once electronic reporting starts will trigger technological innovation. The Inline XBRL format has the potential to bring financial reporting into the digital age.”

This is an important announcement for the community, and XBRL International strongly supports this move towards improved business reporting across Europe. We'll have much more on this in tomorrow's newsletter. 

Read the ESMA press release and the feedback statement detailing responses to the consultation paper. 

Monday, December 19, 2016

Data Analytics Disappears

It has sometimes been said that you know a technology has succeeded when it disappears. That means it has been embedded in regular day-to-day applications such that it is no longer visible to the user even though it is being used. A good example is HTML, the mark-up language used to create websites. At one time, people learned to code in HTML in order to create websites. Now that is not done any more because user friendly tools and templates exist that enable the users to create their website more effectively than ever without even seeing the HTML code, although it is still the backbone of most sites.

Analytics is being embedded in a large number of applications in just this way. People will be using data analytics every day, but will not need to see it or learn it as a separate application. Instead they will use it as part of their regular activities.

One good example is Salesforce, which now incorporates Tableau such that the power of Tableau fueled analytics can be used as part of sales force analysis. Numerous other examples are coming out as analytics becomes a part of SaaS services feeding into many applications.

All of this shows just how fast data analytics is evolving and how quickly it has become mainstream. For more on this development, click this link.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Information increases the complexity of life

Pew Research has released a major study exploring the effects of information overload on peoples' lives. The findings indicate that more people felt that information complicates their lives than felt that they feel overloaded by information. This finding held despite gender, age, ethnicity, income level, educational attainment, etc. The study also found that digital tools help in dealing with information overload. This was supported by 81% of the respondents. On the positive side, 79% felt that information gave them more control over their lives.

There is, however, an indication that there is widespread awareness that some of the information is not reliable. Nevertheless most people (80%) felt that they are able to quickly determine if it is unreliable. It was not clear, however, what criteria those people used to determine whether information is reliable. A study of how people determine this could be quite revealing. We know that false news, unchecked information and unfounded opinion proliferate on the internet. We are not sure what effect this is having on the perceptions and actions of the readers. For a summary of the study, check the Pew website here.

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

Securing the Internet of Things

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently issued a strategy for securing the Internet of Things. This was in response to s string of attacks that demonstrate the vulnerability of internet connected "things" to hackers and the breach of information security and privacy.

The strategy is an important document and sets out a number of principles to be followed.
The first one, that security be included at the design stage, puts manufacturers on notice that the products they make must be more secure before they are sold. For a copy of the announcements and the Strategy, check out the DHS website.

Friday, December 02, 2016

Free Software an Entry Point into Data Analytics

Would you or your organization like to venture into data analytics but can't afford the time and expense of formal training? A useful approach might be to start using free data analytics software. There are some available that have good functionality and can be used for basic data analytics. Of course, it still takes some time, but it may be that the process will yield results more quickly.

Some of the free products that may be useful include Microstrategy 10 by Microstrategy, H2O.ai, KNIME, and Google's Tensorflow. It may be hard to choose one, but you never know until you try.