Digital Financial Reporting

Ventana Research's article, Putting XBRL to Work in the Mortgage Market, describes, in detail, how XBRL can be used by all the parties involved in the pieces of the mortgage process (origination, servicing and owning the credit).

This same idea applies to many, many other processes besides securitized mortgages. A sweet spot for XBRL is any process where 

• One or more parties are on the other side of your firewall or even internally when different departments have different business systems
• Information transaction are more complex than a basic, simple transaction (i.e. such as a 10 or 100 page regulatory report with perhaps thousands of facts exchanged, as opposed to a small transaction with say 10 data points)
• Information exchanged tend to change a little, requiring more flexibility than that of a form
• Zero tolerance for errors in the information (i.e. everything must tick and tie, cross cast and foot, and if things don't add up, bad things happen)
• Information which needs to be reconfigured by the user of the information (i.e. not a form, although XBRL can be used to expressed what amounts to a form, it excels when that "form" needs some flexibility)
• Business people changing the metadata, no IT involvement required (i.e. XBRL has a good balance between power and ease of use)