Jay Hammond’s excellent ‘state of the nation/union’ on XBRL will make surprising reading for my international readership. World leading countries cited include, Japan, China, India, Spain and Holland. Now that makes you think. Jay’s article implies the US has a lot of catch to do.
That’s fascinating when you think that the world’s largest business intelligence and reporting tools vendors are US/Canadian. I’m talking Hyperion, Cognos and BusinessObjects.
The Spanish example is interesting at several levels, not least because it is my home. The extent of their centralised XBRL project is ambitious yet it is meeting with success:
In December 2006, Spain had completed a collection of taxonomies including the Global Common Document, COREP Common Reporting, FINREP Financial Reporting, Public Periodic Information, GAAP 1990, SST and ES-BE-FS. The Spanish also aspire to include reporting on environmental and social performance as well as economic performance.
It has started from a basis of using IFRS = common framework. Spain aspires to become the benchmark nation for the Spanish speaking Latin American world. Who would have thought that of the ‘sun and sangria’ nation?
How does that compare with work going on between HMRC and Companies House?
Spain is perceived as a technology laggard. Yet here we have a country not just leading the way, but opening up all sorts of opportunities for itself as a technology leader. From a taxing authority perspective, the potential to share information that would provide powerful tax intelligence is awesome.
Another data point: The webstats for Julio Alonso’s stable of weblogs makes impressive reading: 19.8 million page views per month on the network with 4.7 million unique viewers. That’s in excess of 10% of the entire Spanish population. Julio doesn’t provide a country breakdown but consider this: It is estimated by some that there is as much as 60% runway to Windows adoption from existing green screens. There’s a lot going on and there’s a lot that could keep that innovation pot boiling nicely. El Blog $almon, its business news blog attracts 335K page views per month.
That’s pretty extraordinary when you think about the likely penetration among senior business people. Spanish management is very much based on a time-served master and servant model and where, sadly, sexism is rife. What I’m suggesting is there must be a significant generation of forward thinkers who are ploughing a deep and lasting furrow.
Agresso bought CCS last December for €28 million. CCS is Spain’s largest service provider, which includes public authorities. See any connection with XBRL? Brian Sommer thinks Agresso is well placed in the mid-market at a time when there is so much turmoil. I have a post coming up which explains all.
It is surprising just how much you can learn by connecting some of the threads, looking in unexpected places and recognising the potential for value arising out of innovative approaches to change.
Disclosure:
Julio is a friend I met early in my blogging exploits. He’s a fine man with a great commitment to the medium. I’d be interested in speaking with Spanish business people about the value of innovation.
Agresso is a current client.
Technorati Tags: agresso, BusinessObjects, Cognos, HMRC, Hyperion, innovation, spanish technology, XBRL
