Electronic analysis of business reports
Every company has to draw up a business report once a year. At an international level, the electronic standard format XBRL is becoming increasingly widespread. Reports prepared in this format can be efficiently analyzed using a software tool called ABRA.
Every company faces the task once a year: it’s time to draw up the business report. Depending on the size of the firm, this may turn out to be a bulky and accordingly complex document. To compile it, analysts have to collect the essential data painstakingly by hand. The business report is a vital element of credit applications – so at the other end of the line, bank clerks fight their way through heterogeneous piles of papers and data all year round. To reduce the effort for both sides and make it easier to analyze and compare company data, organizations such as the International Accounting Standards Board have been pleading for years to have business reports compiled in an internationally recognized, compatible electronic form. Their preferred computer language is XBRL (extensible Business Reporting Language), a data format based on the WWW standard XML. XBRL is already mandatory in the USA for the quarterly reports submitted by 8400 banks to the bank supervisory agency FDIC. XBRL has been made the national standard in Japan while Spain and the Netherlands are currently the pioneers in Europe.
“But a standardized format alone is not enough when you need a rapid analysis of the documents,” stresses Thomas Risse of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems IPSI in Darmstadt. “What really makes a difference is having the right tool!” The ABRA software, developed by researchers to meet this need, enables bankers and stock brokers to find specific information in the business reports, extract the information and feed it into their databases. They can also convert the whole report into other formats such as pdf or Word files. “ABRA is not the only tool of this type, of course,” Risse admits, “but it is the most efficient one at the moment.” ABRA often requires only a single line of code to perform a task that in generic programs – software designed for multiple applications – involves processing screenfuls of commands. This efficient structure results from the fact that the researchers developed their tool specifically for XBRL.
For a year now, a basic version of ABRA has been available as an open-source program from "www.xbrl-open.org". The IPSI researchers will make the first public presentation of their more advanced server-based version in Hall 9 at CeBIT from March 9 to 15. They developed this version jointly with ABZ Informatik GmbH. As one example of its new features, ABRA now has a formula processor that enables it to perform the plausibility checks customary in the world of finance.
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