Digital Financial Reporting

Oracle issued a press release today stating that is introducing two new applications which are intended to improve the timeliness and confidence in financial reporting.  Both products support XBRL-based financial filings.  The two products are: Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management and Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management.

See the press release for mode details, but here is a summary of the news facts provided within the press release:

• To help organizations improve the accuracy and speed of financial close and reporting, Oracle today introduced Oracle® Hyperion Disclosure Management and Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management.
• The new applications extend the capabilities of the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System to address the end-to-end financial close process and the creation of regulatory filings using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
• Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management and Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management work in conjunction with other Oracle EPM applications such as Hyperion Financial Management or can be deployed directly with ERP General Ledger systems.
• These new applications are available with Oracle EPM System Release 11.1.2, also announced today (read today's related news release).

Last week I saw a demo of the disclosure management product.  The most striking thing about the product is that it looked like a financial reporting application and not an XBRL application.  Finally, a business user application which can be used to then output XBRL.

While XBRL applications have improved year after year during the 11 years which I have been working with XBRL, the disclosure management product does a lot to make XBRL disappear into the background where it belongs.  Users of the application can leverage the benefits of XBRL without having to struggle with the XBRL technology.  This is as it should be.  The product probably is not perfect, but it certainly is a huge step in the right direction from my perspective.

Anyone know of other financial reporting products taking this type of an approach?  I know of a few, I am always trying to find more.  Please let me know if you come across a good one.

In a press release today, Oracle announced that their Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System will support XBRL with help from UBmatrix.  An excerpt from the press release states:

To help publicly held companies facilitate the preparation, publishing and automatic exchange of financial statements in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), Oracle will embed UBmatrix, Inc.’s leading XBRL technology into Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System, Oracle announced today.

You can read the press release yourself. Here is a link to information on what SAP is doing with XBRL. Not to leave out the company I work for, UBmatrix who is providing XBRL components for both SAP and Oracle, see here for more info.

In a related story, Investor's Business Daily says:

Today, most software companies — including UBmatrix, Germany's SAP (SAP), Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) — are starting to create XBRL software to help companies send financial data over the Web.

I would probably add IBM to the list of companies who are creating XBRL software to help companies send financial (and other businessdata) over the Web.  IBM is pushing XBRL as a standard for risk reporting as you can see from this Web page and this Web page.  They are probably moving slowly but deliberately as they figure out how to best integrate XBRL into their offerings.

(If anyone knows specifically what IBM and Microsoft are doing, love to hear know that, maybe you could post a comment on this blog.)