Organizations that are interested in understanding those effects are probably asking what they should do next. Does the emergence of XBRL mean that CFOs should turn their organizations inside out, start new reporting projects, or reshape their investor relations platform? Not necessarily.

Monitoring XBRL and recognizing where its application could alter existing strategies should definitely be on the agenda. For some companies, early adoption of the technology will make a positive statement about the transparency of their operations. For others, the application of the technology will bring about business benefits that can’t be passed up, notwithstanding the relative immaturity of the supporting tools available today.

The time frame for a standard of this nature to take hold, meaning entire supply chains adopting it, is difficult to predict. How long did it take for bar codes to revolutionize retailing and logistics? Nearly ten years. How long did it take for Internet browsers and the HTML standard to turn information dissemination upside down? About four years. How long will it take for XBRL to become the corporate reporting platform? No one knows. But the pace of adoption is accelerating. And standards allow new business models, new efficiencies, and new specializations to flourish. Are you ready for these changes?

None of this needs to mean that companies must embark on new, expensive ERP systems implementations, or become experts in XBRL technology.

Over the next two to three years systems vendors will provide the platform for reporting system interoperability by simply building XBRL support into their environments. The standard will make a lot of business reporting processes simpler, and that should be true of projects to define and develop reporting processes as well.

KPMG Member Firms' Suggestions for Discrete Entities

Here are our suggestions on some next steps for CFOs:

Identifying how many systems are used in producing your business information

Identifying the number, complexity, and quality of business processes that go into producing your business information

Measuring the number of person hours that go into producing key management information and comparing that figure with the amount of time that goes into analysis

Critically examining the relevance (the timeliness and predictive value) of key management information

Here are our suggestions for buy-side and sell-side investment analyst firms:

Cost savings that can be realized from receiving information in XBRL format

Systems impact of receiving complete financial statements in a single format

New types of analytics that can be developed using XBRL data streams

The added value that research recipients will derive from receiving research reports in XBRL format

Here is our suggestion for banks and regulators that collect large numbers of financial statements:

Other suggestions: