Chapter 9

Reporting Processes and

eXtensible Business Reporting

Language (XBRL)

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Learning Objectives

• LO#1 Explain how data warehouses are created and used • LO#2 Describe the basic components of business intelligence

and how they are utilized in a firm• LO#3 Describe how digital dashboards allow for continuous

tracking of key metrics• LO#4 Explain how XBRL works and how it makes business

reporting more efficient

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Data Warehouses

• A data warehouse is a collection of information gathered from an assortment of external and operational (i.e, internal) databases to facilitate reporting for decision making and business analysis.

• Data warehouses often serve as the main repository of the firm's historical data, or in other words, its corporate memory and will often serve as an archive of past firm performance.

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LO# 1

Data Warehouses

• Data warehouses are kept separate from the operational database. – Information in the warehouse can be stored safely for extended

periods of time and data warehouses can run data queries without slowing down the performance of the company’s operational systems.

• Data warehouses do work together with operational systems to provide necessary insight, particularly in the case of customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) systems.– What are customers buying? What did they buy in a recession? What did they buy after

a natural disasters? What do they buy as their income goes up?

• Data warehouses are often designed to facilitate decision making such as those often used in managerial accounting.– Output might include variance reports, trend reports, variance analysis

reports, and reports that show actual performance are compared to budgeted information.

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LO# 1

Model of Data Warehouse Design

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LO# 1

Business Intelligence

• Business Intelligence is a computer-based technique for accumulating and analyzing data from databases and data warehouses to support managerial decision making.

• One way that firms may gather business intelligence is by use of a web crawler, which systematically browses the World Wide Web in a systematic way, collecting information.

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LO# 2

Process of Business Intelligence

• Gather information (either internal information, external information or both) from a variety of sources.

• Analyze the data to discern patterns and trends from that information to gain understanding and meaning.

• Make decisions, hopefully better informed ones, based on the information gained.

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LO# 2

Examples of Business Intelligence

• How would American Airlines (hub in Dallas) and US Airways (hub in Phoenix) use business intelligence to track its competitor’s prices over different times, days of the week, etc.?

• How would Merrill Lynch use business intelligence to price an initial public offering of stock for a firm in the Internet retail industry? – They may use business intelligence to assess current

economic and stock market conditions, assess how other Internet retail firms are performing in the stock market and assess how initial public offerings have recently performed.

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LO# 2

Data Mining

• Data mining is one technique used to analyze data for business intelligence purposes. Data mining is a process using sophisticated statistical techniques to extract and analyze data from large databases to discern patterns and trends that were not previously known. – Data mining is often used to find patterns in stock

prices to assist technical financial stock market analysts, or in commodities or currency trading.

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LO# 2

Data Mining

• Data mining will only find statistical relationships and some of them represent spurious correlations. Data mining must be coupled with common sense to interpret the statistical relationships found.– There is a classic example that ice cream sales are

correlated with drownings suggesting that as ice cream sales increase, the number of drownings also increase. That does not mean that ice cream sales cause drownings or that drownings cause more ice cream sales, but rather that warm weather caused (or had an effect on) both.

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LO# 2

Digital Dashboards

• A digital dashboard is designed to track the firm process or performance indicators or metrics to monitor critical performance. – Orders month to date, days that receivables are

outstanding, budget variances, and days without an accident on the assembly line, etc. are all examples of what might be tracked continuously.

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LO# 3

Example of Digital Dashboard at GE

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LO# 3

FINANCIAL REPORTING AND XBRL

• XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language and is based on the XML language, a standard for Internet communication between businesses.

• The XBRL database is available for various uses, including reporting on the firm’s web site, filing to regulators (SEC, IRS, etc.) and providing information to other interested parties such as financial analysts, loan officers and investors.

• Each interested XBRL user can either access standard reports (i.e. 10-K going to the SEC or the corporate tax return going to the IRS) or specialized reports (i.e. accessing only specific data for a financial analyst, etc.).

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LO# 4

Financial Reporting Using XBRL

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LO# 4

XBRL Terminology

• The XBRL taxonomy defines and describes each key data element (e.g., total assets, accounts, payable, net income, etc.).

• XBRL instance documents contain the actual dollar amounts or the details of each of the elements within the firm’s XBRL database.

• XBRL style sheets take the instance documents and add presentation elements to make them readable by humans.

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LO# 4

Should XBRL be audited?What assurances do we need on XBRL?

• We believe XBRL Assurance should include the following assurances that:– The most current, standardized XBRL taxonomy is

used,– The underlying financial and nonfinancial data that is

used in XBRL tagging is reliable,– The XBRL tagging is accurate and complete, and,– The reports generated using XBRL are complete and

received on a timely basis.

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LO# 4

XBRL GL

• XBRL GL is also known as XBRL Global Ledger Taxonomy

• XBRL GL allows the representation of anything that is found in a chart of accounts, journal entries or historical transactions, financial and non-financial.

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LO# 4

How XBRL Works

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LO# 4

XBRL Summary

• XBRL serves as a means to electronically communicate business information to facilitate business reporting of financial and nonfinancial data to users.

• XBRL greatly enhances the speed and accuracy of business reporting.

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LO# 4

Summary

• Data warehouses serve as a repository of information that is separate from the operating databases of the firm to support decision making across a number of functions in the firm. – Data marts represent a slice of data from the data warehouse to meet a

specific need.

• Business intelligence uses computer-based techniques to accumulate and analyze data that might be helpful to the firm’s strategic initiatives.

• Digital dashboards tracks critical firm performance in a way that is easily accessible to executives.

• XBRL serves as a means to electronically communicate business information and facilitate business reporting of financial and nonfinancial data to users.

LO# 4

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