We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with Virtua Research to offer analysts and sophisticated investors the Interactive Analyst Center – a new standard of rendering a company’s financial data.

The Interactive Analyst Center was originally designed at the request of Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited with the purpose of providing investors and analysts the most advanced new suite of interactive financials and graphing tools, all embedded in a single, logical location — the investor section of a company’s website.

Some of the KEY FEATURES include:

• Excel like Presentation – for ease of use and accessibility
• Multiple Annual and Quarterly Data – for simplified, more contextual investor understanding
• Export to Excel – statements and data can be exported for simplified model building
• Interactive Graphs – build, select and graph interactive operational and financial ratios
• Links to Actual Filing Data – right-click any line item to view source documents
• Ratio Descriptions –  left-click any ratio for more detailed  information and formula

There are also many BENEFITS to making this feature available on your company website as it will:

• Increase your company valuation with best practices transparent disclosure
• Offer the interactivity of exporting to Excel up to 5 years of aggregated financial data
• Save time, effort and money educating existing and potential investors
• Improve control of your financial message for more consistent investor modeling
• Update your quarterly financials in real time for conference call “housekeeping” questions
• Provide new methods of visualizing financial relationships with interactive graphing tools
• Seamlessly integrates into any corporate or investor website

Click the button below to view a live demo.

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The 2 ½ day event consisted of discussion sessions and workshops to educate and generate ideas on solving issues in XBRL development such as rendering, versioning, data quality and validation.

In an otherwise very tech-centric conference, Q4’s Co-founder and CEO, Darrell Heaps provided some interesting ways that companies can make XBRL content discoverable, shareable and viral to move seamlessly through the financial web by key stakeholders such as analysts and investors.

What follows are the salient points from his presentation ”IR Websites and XBRL Rendering” from the session: Best Practices and Current Approaches for Rendering XBRL in which panelists discussed current approaches and emerging practices for preparing and rendering XBRL content.

Other Speakers included:
Diane Mueller, VP, XBRL Development, JustSystems
Masatomo Goto, Manager, Fujitsu
Ted Stavropoulos, Director of Business Development, Rivet Software

Before I get into the details, here is a link to a recent blog which provides a broad overview of why XBRL is relevant to IROs and the requirements for adoption, a broad definition and the implications of using it to help improve processes.

IR WEBSITES AND THE SOCIAL FINANCIAL WEB

Some emerging trends in the market over time provide compelling evidence to support providing users with the tools to make XBRL filings easier to find, download and analyze.

KEY TRENDS

1. The IR website is a primary channel of communicating and is how companies are interacting with the market.  For example, a study by Rivel Research states that 75% of pro investors use corporate websites weekly if not daily.
2. Increased use of the web and social media to communicate with key audiences.  For example, a Nielsen online report issued in March 2009, states that 67% of the global online population uses social networks and blogs.
3. Decline in the number of sell side analysts are helping to push coverage and equity research to the social web.  As such there has been an emergence in financial blogs such as Seeking Alpha, StockTwits and wikinvest.  Companies should pay attention to these sites and review how they are packaging their information to make it easier for them to be covered by these new channels.

One interesting thing to note about Wikinvest is that while it is not yet based on XBRL, they are leveraging interactive data features.  For example, they have charts and other data presentations each as its’ own atomized piece of content.  Packaging information so it is easier to share, disseminate and embed enables downstream content providers such as blogs to pick up the information and include it in their reports.

INVESTOR RELATIONS ADOPTION

Some observations and recent comments about the filing of XBRL statements for reporting periods ending after June 15th indicate that companies are only doing the minimum to be compliant under the SEC mandate.

For example, In a recent IR Magazine blog, Neil Hannon, senior XBRL consultant at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Gilbane Group was quoted as saying “Companies are doing the bare minimum with XBRL on their websites. ‘They’re complying with the SEC rules by putting their XBRL statements on the web but they aren’t giving users any tools to play around with them.”

It goes on to quote an IRO who feels that “putting more sophisticated XBRL tools…could benefit retail investors but he has no plans to do so because the company is over 90% institutionally held.”

Adding to the sentiment of Neil Hannon, the current solutions being offered to companies right now don’t have the XBRL content connected to the IR website and instead are treating it as a pop-up.  Not having the content anchored in the IR website decreases the “discoverability” of your company by diminishing the ability of search engines to index the content and help you be found by new investors.

It has obviously taken a lot of work to get XBRL to this point.  One can view the unfolding of XBRL in three phases:

1. Creation of taxonomy
2. Compliance
3. Competition

However, it seems that there has not been a lot of thought to how it will evolve and the benefits of catering to key audiences such as investors, analysts and the financial media by making the content viral and shareable across the financial web.

We are in the compliance phase as the deadline for the 500 largest companies to produce their first official XBRL statements was August 10th (which is the deadline for 10-Qs from calendar-year filers, or within their one-time-only 30-day grace period).

In order to move from a straight “compliance” mentality, IROs need to see how the data can be used in innovative ways to help tell their investment story and differentiate themselves from their peers.   At a very high level, the XBRL community needs to demonstrate to the IR community that using XBRL as a strategic tool will help them be more competitive.

Right now, the focus will likely be on reviewing XBRL statements filed to-date.  As issuers get more savvy and nail down the straight compliance aspects, they will hopefully begin to assess how they can make the data easier to render for their key audiences.

OUR VIEW OF WHAT’S NEEDED

In speaking with the investment community and in particular our conversations with companies about the many benefits of social media and how it can enhance communications with their investors and the investment community at large, we offer the following strategic concepts for rendering XBRL content for the social web:

1. Rendered XBRL filings should be connected to the “source of authority” (SEC database): In order for XBRL data to be easily shared and disseminated throughout the social web it needs to remain connected to the “source of authority” in this case, being the SEC database.  In doing so, this will help ensure the data is validated and trusted as it is shared, embedded and republished across the web.  In addition to this, our view is the filing should also have a permanent url connected to IR website. Again, so that it can be linked to from various external sources. Many of the early solutions provide the XBRL as a static “copy” of the SEC filing and display this in a pop-up alongside other filings. This approach disconnects the filings from the source of authority and inhibits the ability of this content to maintain it’s integrity while being shared and republished.
2. Content should be discoverable:  XBRL content should be integrated into the IR website, not simply linked to a pop-up alongside all of the other filings.  Doing so improves the content’s discoverability via search engines and exposes the financial data to the web at large. Giving investors the ability to use search engines to search for “XYZ corp’s income statement” will expose the value of XBRL to the web and provide the ability for companies to attract new investors.
3. Charts, Graphs, Visualization:  The use of charts, graphs and other visual elements is key to helping the company “tell it’s story through data”.  These elements enhance the investor’s experience by allowing key financial information to be quickly extracted and understood.  By providing visual elements to the rendering of XBRL it will help both investors and IROs experience the strategic value of interactive data.

Of course the above three elements are only the beginning. XBRL represents a massive opportunity and challenge for the market.  The key aspect as this point of XBRL’s evolution is for the market to start focusing on the true value it can provide to investors and on how companies and their IRO’s can use XBRL to provide greater insight into their value and telling their investment story.

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Recently a report was published by The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) targeted to CFO’s entitled “Transition to XBRL”. In spite of this being issued in Canada, the report provides a balanced review of what is required for U.S. companies and foreign private issuers under the SEC’s implementation schedule for XBRL as well as highlighting significant developments in the implementation of XBRL as it pertains to Canadian preparers.

It also explores the benefits and downfalls of implementation and offers some practical tips that are applicable and easily adaptable to issuers in both the U.S. and Canada.  I do recommend that you read the report in its entirety and keep it handy for reference, but wanted to provide some of its highlights.

CURRENT STATE of XBRL in the U.S. and CANADA

In January 2009, the SEC introduced a phased mandate for filing in XBRL starting with the largest companies in 2009 and then extending to all sizes of companies by the end of 2011, which means at that time, all SEC filers, including some 451 Canadian companies listed on U.S. exchanges will have implemented XBRL.  This three-year phase-in will impact ten percent of Canada’s public companies.

The rules require companies to provide their financial statements on their corporate websites in an interactive data format using XBRL at the same time their financial statements are submitted to the SEC.

BENEFITS OF XBRL

1. Universal language for business reporting
   a. Serves as a data channel for information across all languages and accounting standards.
   b. XBRL is compatible with off the shelf-software and investment models for comparative and analytical uses by investors, analysts and journalists.
   c. XBRL data can be converted into various formats, including spreadsheet, database and HTML files.
2. Adaptable to other applications
   a. Crosses over into other financial statement reporting including earnings press releases, corporate tax filings, and the disclosure of non-financial data such as oil reserves.
   b. The technology also offers tremendous potential in terms of internal business reporting, and will allow full integration of reporting systems which will enable management to more readily reuse tagged data and, thereby, achieve greater efficiency.
3. Multi-stakeholder appeal
   a. Will save data collectors such as analysts, stock exchanges and regulators a lot of time and resources needed to punch in the data and convert it for their needs.
   b. The errors associated with rekeying the data will be eliminated as third-party intermediaries will not be enlisted to transfer the data – this will also reduce the lag time between the reporting and use of data.
   c. Potential to streamline preparers’ data collection and reporting processes by uniting legacy systems.

There is one additional point under #3 that I found very interesting and one I hadn’t thought of before……“The elimination of tedious data entry and conversion steps will allow analysts to compare a broader range of industry participants in less time. Expanded peer analyses could be positive news for small companies, which often go overlooked in such comparisons. This reasoning holds true beyond our national borders; as XBRL continues to gain acceptance in global jurisdictions, Canadian companies, large and small, could achieve greater international exposure”.

In providing a fair and unbiased review of XBRL, the report also outlined some of the drawbacks of XBRL.

IMPLEMENTATION HURDLES

1. Associated Costs – there will be a financial and human capital cost to implementation and most Canadian companies that file in the U.S. will face the dual task of adopting XBRL and IFRS in 2011.
2. Potential for error – the tagging process involves inherent judgement to the extent that preparers must decide which taxonomy elements should be mapped to particular financial statement items.
3. Customized Tags – preparers may rely on self-defined extensions to capture the unique aspects of their business. This may undermine the reliability and comparability as many believe that extensions are acceptable only when they are applied consistently across industries.
4. Misrepresentation – some feel that customization could allow companies to paint a rosier picture of financial performance.  In addition, some feel that this will also allow analysts to influence how a company is perceived as XBRL will simplify the practice of extracting specific information such as single lines from the financial statements.
5. Real-time Disclosure – some feel that because the data will be reported in virtually real-time, it will emphasize short-term performance at the expense of long-term planning.  For example, one unfavourable month might start a sell-off by investors.

The report then provides practical tips for planning and implementing an XBRL strategy:

PLANNING STAGE

1. Evaluate the range of available options within the context of the company and its operations.
2. Consider how the potential pitfalls examined in this briefing can be minimized or avoided.
3. Integrate XBRL into IFRS conversion strategy.
4. Involve the accounting, finance, and IT departments.
5. Weigh long-term costs and benefits of self-tagging versus outsourcing.
6. Encourage consistent use of extensions among industry participants. Support industry associations in the development of standardized tagging methodologies, which can then be incorporated into the IFRS taxonomy through the joint project of XBRL Canada and the IASB Foundation.

IMPLEMENTATION STAGE

1. Consider voluntary filing in XBRL.
2. Simplify first-time tagging with a less complex filing such as a quarterly filing.
3. Address outstanding questions with software vendor or outsourcing partners.
4. Thoroughly review the tagged document prior to filing.
5. Be prepared to receive questions and provide explanations much sooner.

I like the practical tips provided in this report – from an IRO perspective it should be viewed the same way as integrating any new tool into your IR program.  Which means you should:

• Be educated and well versed in the pros and cons so you can have an intelligent conversation with the executive team.
• Assess how it will fit in with the company’s current environment including talking with other departments who will be affected by its implementation such as accounting, finance and IT.
• Talk to outside vendors and get the complete picture of the cost and time associated with either outsourcing or taking it internally.
• Test it out for yourself – as time goes by quickly and before you know it, it will be mandatory for for all U.S. issuers by the end of 2011 and in Canada it is likely to become mandatory after Canada transitions to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) also in 2011.

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Mike Willis, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Chairman, XBRL International

Panelist(s)/Co-Speaker(s):
Michael Becker, VP, Global Disclosure & Financial Reporting Services
Business Wire

This session was quite comprehensive, so I thought it would be useful to discuss the agenda that was put forth:

WHY IS THIS RELEVANT?
Public companies push out a lot of IR content such as earnings releases, quarterly reports and annual reports.  Once disseminated into the public domain, third party information intermediaries distill, transcribe and structure the company reported information into their proprietary taxonomies and sell that structured information to the analyst community.  This third party intermediary information is also available through sources such as Yahoo! Finance, Google and MSN Money.  From these publicly available sources IROs can directly observe the omissions, errors and other communication problems created by the third party intermediaries such as changing disclosure concepts and/or omitting key company specific unique disclosures.  This intermediary distortion in turn can lead to inquiries that don’t make any sense or worse, no inquiries at all – which means the investment community is solely relying upon the data transcribed and rendered by third party sources, thereby diminishing the company’s opportunity to correct any errors.

If you are skeptical of the degree of errors and omissions to your company reports please take a minute right now and go to the public sites and review the data available for your company and compare that information to your company reports.  “The data provided by intermediaries is incorrect as often as 30% of the time and incomplete 100% of the time“. The typical omission is the unique company specific disclosure, which is highly relevant to company IROs.

This is unfortunate, as preparing and finalizing material documents is typically a very time consuming and costly process, largely due to manual assembly and review processes that draws upon a lot of internal resources such as the finance, legal and IR department’s time to compile, review and publish – not to mention the costs associated with filing with the regulatory bodies and mailing out hard copies.

WHAT IS REQUIRED?
As some of you may know, in January 2009, the SEC introduced a phased mandate for filing in XBRL starting with the largest companies with a worldwide public float of greater than $5 billion – periods ending on or after June 15, 2009 and then extending to all sizes of companies over the next three years. The rules require companies to provide their financial statements on their corporate websites in an interactive data format using XBRL at the same time their financial statements are submitted to the SEC.

Content Requirements
In the first year of filing in XBRL format, issuers are required to tag each unique disclosure concept in the company primary tables (balance sheet, income statement, cash flows, changes in equity) and “block” tag (e.g. one tag per note) the financial statement footnotes and schedules.

In all subsequent years of XBRL formatted exhibits, issuers are required to tag the financial statement disclosures and also individually tag each significant accounting policy, table within a footnote and each quantitative amount within a footnote.  It is this second year requirement that significantly enhances the volume and accuracy of company disclosures available to the analyst community in a very cost effective, accurate and timely manner.

The XBRL Exhibit is required to be filed concurrently except for the initial report in each of the first two years which would be due no later than 30 days subsequently.

For purposes of the company SEC exhibit, the MD&A, executive compensation, or other financial, statistical or narrative disclosure outside the financial statements is not permitted to be tagged.

Corporate Website Posting Requirements
The XBRL filing is to be posted on a company’s corporate website by the end of the calendar day submitted or required to be submitted to the SEC.  The XBRL exhibit must remain on the website for at least one year; however, legal liability provisions are phased out over a two-year period with no “required” involvement by the auditor.

The US SEC rules will apply to public companies and foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (U.S. GAAP), and foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

WHAT IS IT?
XBRL is a freely available international information standardized format specifically designed for business information.  As such, it is specifically designed to provide supply chain standardization to address pervasive process problems.  XBRL is applicable to business information, related business rules, formulas and controls to not only to make financial information easier for investors to analyze, but also to assist in automating regulatory filings and business information processing.

As an Internet standard, XBRL can be used to create a common language for disparate proprietary software applications to more seamlessly communicate.  This is sort of similar to html but in a more granular manner and specifically for business information.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR THE ISSUER?
There are many implications of using XBRL to improve processes.  For example, issuers can implement using the bolt-on approach in which filings and reports are created following the existing process and converted to XBRL once finalized, either in-house or by a third party.  There is also the embedded option, which would enable companies to map their disclosures to the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy directly within their report writer or consolidation application.  Pushing standardization further back into the business information supply chain provides structure for automation of downstream processes including the accurate rendering of XBRL-tagged SEC filings that can be accessed via your website with many interactive features.

Embedding XBRL in corporate reporting processes enables:

• Seamless exchange of information between software applications like your website and your analysts’ modeling applications,
• Automation of manual processes = lower costs, improved quality & timeliness like for your summary tables and graphs provided on your website,
• Enhanced transparency, access and control of information contained across a wide range of disparate internal data stores similar to the wide range of internal data stores that you are trying to access to address performance related inquiries,
• Improvements in data quality and access, and
• Better access to more relevant information for better decision-making, enhancing business intelligence and performance management information.

XBRL is more than a trend that IROs must be cognizant of – it will soon be mandatory for all U.S. based issuers and there is a voluntary program currently taking place in Canada to help the Canadian marketplace gain a greater understanding of this information standard.  Therefore it is essential that there is a full understanding how communication between the investor community and IROs evolve with the XBRL standard.  So stay tuned for additional blogs and presentations on XBRL.

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Read the full release! 

We officially launched our Summer ’09 release from the NIRI National Conference in FL, which introduces Social Media and XBRL capabilities to IR websites.  This latest release offers different ways for investors to find, subscribe and share content through social networks.

Q4’s web platform continuously evolves with market and regulatory trends that keep the IR website on the leading edge of companies’ investor communications.  Q4’s latest IR website products create viral IR content, which means they can be shared, disseminated and republished across the web to millions of retail and institutional investors. 

Customers can now:

• Embed and distribute presentations, videos and documents through SlideShare, YouTube and Docstoc,
• Automatically update Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook with news presentations and events, and
• Aggregate all social activities on the IR website with inbound RSS feeds.

We also announced from the NIRI National Conference, that our Q4 web platform now delivers a highly accurate real-time rendering of XBRL-tagged SEC filings. 

Read the full release! 

This new product enables users to view XBRL-formatted financial statements in an easy to read display on IR websites while helping public companies meet the new SEC XBRL regulations which require them to post financial statements in interactive data formats. 

To respond to this mandate Q4 now offers US-based filers:

•  XBRL financials with real-time rendering on your website – once your XBRL filing is accepted by the SEC, within minutes your website is updated with the complete filing displayed in HTML,
• Multiple report formats for enhanced financial analysis and reporting by investors, analysts and the financial media, and
• Ability to view and download XBRL reports, or share embed codes through social networks. 

If you’re interested in learning more contact us today and we’ll setup a live product demo.

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• Find out why social media is now a key aspect of investor relations in lowering capital costs, why it doesn’t need to be difficult and how to responsibly get involved.

• Learn about XBRL filings that can be viewed in an easy to ready display on your website.

For those of you, who can’t make it, we will be providing regular updates on Twitter and posting on our blog.

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Summer ‘09 Preview

Earlier today we released our Summer ‘09 Preview through Twitter and LinkedIn. In case you didn’t see it there, we wanted to let you know that our latest release brings Social Media and XBRL to Investor Relations websites in a way that you haven’t seen before. If you’re interested, register for a demo today and your chance to win an HP Netbook!

Over the next couple of weeks we are going to officially launch Summer ‘09 and provide more details on these exciting new additions.  Until then, a couple of key features that separate Q4 from the rest of the IR website providers include:

• 30+  best practice IR website modules integrate with any website
• Easy to use content management and workflow
• Leading edge Investor Tools and Social Media Sharing
• XBRL financials with real-time rendering on your website
• Presentations, videos and documents distributed through popular social networks
• Full-text RSS feeds, email alerts and subscriber management
• Website disclosure records and verifiable audit trail

Register for your preview of Q4 Summer ‘09 today!

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Chairman Cox Video: The SEC has approved interactive data financial reporting to give investors faster, better, and less expensive information disclosure.

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The information session will feature expert speakers from the CSA and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) who will discuss recent proposals by the SEC for the mandatory use of XBRL, as well as the move to XBRL in Canada.

“As a business reporting language, XBRL will make it easier for investors and analysts to analyze financial information from a large number of different companies,” said James Turner, Vice-Chair, Ontario Securities Commission. “The CSA is supportive of XBRL and is hosting this event to help the Canadian marketplace gain a greater understanding of this exciting technology.”

Speakers:

• James Turner, Vice-Chair, Ontario Securities Commission
• David Blaszkowsky, Director, Office of Interactive Disclosure, SEC
• Peter Grant, Chief Information Officer, British Columbia Securities Commission
• Cameron McInnis, Chief Accountant (Acting), Ontario Securities Commission

Event Information:

• Wednesday, September 24, 2008 from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the

Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building in Room 714
There is no charge to attend this event. For registration, please go to www.xbrl.ca/registration, or contact Joanne Platsis at the Ontario Securities Commission at 416-593-8222.

Those unable to attend are invited to listen or view the event live from the CSA website
www.csa-acvm.ca/html_CSA/xbrl.html

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IDEA is the latest in a string of significant announcements that have come out of the SEC including, XBRL mandate and the guidance on web disclosure and RegFD. There have already been a number of posts regarding this announcement and it seems to be well covered by the financial media (see bottom of IR Web Report’s post – SEC unveils IDEA — and that’s all it is). 

During the webcast Chris Vickerson, our CTO was involved in FT Alphaville’s liveblog  discussion and also had one of his question answered by Christopher Cox.  After the web cast the SEC home page was updated with a significant focus on IDEA. From the link on the home page there is an overview of IDEA that I’ve summarized below (emphasis is mine):

IDEA will at first supplement and then eventually replace the EDGAR system, which will become an archive of SEC filings made prior to the new era of financial reporting in interactive data format. The SEC has formally proposed requiring U.S. companies to provide financial information using interactive data beginning as early as next year, and separately has proposed requiring mutual funds to submit their public filings using interactive data.

The decision to replace EDGAR marks the SEC’s transition from collecting government-prescribed forms and documents to making the information itself freely available to investors in a user-friendly format they can readily use. Instead of sifting through one form at a time in EDGAR and then re-keyboarding the information to analyze it, investors will be able to utilize interactive data to instantly search and collate information to generate reports and analysis from thousands of companies and forms through IDEA.

The ease with which interactive data will make financial information more readily available also is expected to generate many new Web-based services and products for investors. IDEA’s launch represents a fundamental change in the way the SEC collects and publishes company and fund information — and in the way that investors and the markets will be able to use it.

Although there was nothing materially new announced during today’s webcast (no new technology or application were shown), IDEA is an important when viewed in the context of how disclosure is going to evolve over the next 5 years. The timetable to full maturity is 5 years out, and while it is being phased in EDGAR will remain an important component of the financial disclosure system. However, if we fast forward to market adoption of XBRL and IDEA there will be many new ways that companies will create and distribute disclosure to the market and there will be all sorts of new applications and methods for investors to benefit from this data. It certainly is an exciting time for our industry and we are very pleased to see the leadership Christopher Cox has shown in bringing the SEC into the age of the Internet.

Some Additional information on Interactive Data:
http://www.sec.gov//spotlight/xbrl.shtml

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