Digital Financial Reporting

I updated an example that now does something really interesting.  If you go to this PROOF+COMMON+RENDERING example you will find this Inline XBRL Instance.  That was generated using the Microsoft Access database in this ZIP archive.  Now, keep in mind that I am not really a very good programmer, but it will give you an idea of how to generate renderings.  I don't have an interface for editing the "cells" that drive the rendering, I just edit the database table.

That might not look like much, but you could create a complete XBRL-based 10-K for Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, or anyone else using that Microsoft Access database.  Clearly you would want an XBRL processor and XBRL Formula processor to verify that everything is working correctly (that is what I do).

A Harvard Business Review article by Becky Frankiewicz and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Digital Transformation Is About Talent, Not Technology, points out:

“...the best way to make your organization more data-centric and digital is to selectively invest in those who are most adaptable, curious, and flexible in the first place.”

“Technical competence is temporary, but intellectual curiosity must be permanent.”

“A much bigger competitive advantage is to harness valuable data, having the necessary skills to translate that data into meaningful insights, and above all being able to act on those insights.”

Excellent read.  It seems as thought the risk of not adapting is increasing significantly.

This article points out that digital transformation is a leadership problem.

Digital transformation in developing countries.

By understanding the Essence of Accounting it is possible to understand likely futures of accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis.

Given that the CEO of IBM believes that every company will ultimately become "an AI company", that each of the Big 4 are telling their clients that the fourth industrial revolution is a thing and to pay attention to AI, and at least one of the Big 4 has provided a pretty good vision of what finance will look like in the future; significant change is pretty much a forgone conclusion.

But change to what?  Think human-machine collaboration. How exactly will all this artificial intelligence stuff work?  Well, no one really knows with certainty but there has been some significant experimentation; but I have placed my bet.

Fundamentally, accounting works like this: INPUT (journals) >> PROCESSING >> OUTPUT (report)

The basics of accounting can be explained using basic math and/or graph theory.  Complexity exists but that complexity comes in the form of explainable patterns.  With the complexities of the real world, it can look more like this:

If you understand the essence of accounting and you understand the essence of how computers work then all this stuff is actually pretty straight forward and easy to grasp.

In his first keynote address since becoming IBM's CEO, Arvind Krishna predicts that every company will become an AI company:

“More than 20 years ago, experts predicted every company would become an internet company. I am predicting today that every company will become an AI company - not because they can, but because they must.”

He also pointed out,

"Transformation journeys that would have lasted years are now being forced through in a matter of months.”

Another good reason to check out Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering in a Nutshell.