Intelligent Enterprise

Business Objects announced a technology partnership that will allow the business intelligence software firm's customers to research and analyze financial data formatted in Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).

Business Objects, integration software firm Ipedo and financial information source Edgar Online contributed elements of their technology to produce a joint XBRL-enhanced BI tool. The new product combines the Business Objects XI platform, Ipedo XIP and Edgar Online's I-Metrix suite of XBRL-based products.

XBRL is an XML-based data standard for the corporate documents that companies file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other government agencies. XBRL tags each data cell and each line of content in a financial statement to provide a computer-understandable context and, therefore, fast query and analysis.

Business Objects and its partners are promoting their XBRL tool as a means for research analysts, investors, fund managers, regulators and business executives to "gain insight into market conditions directly from corporate filings, as they happen."

If XBRL is established as a mandatory standard for filing financial reports, as is widely expected to occur, it's likely to ignite a competitive analytics explosion as rivals keep tabs on each other's finances and operations.

As the Business Objects partnership's product is configured, Edgar Online's proprietary systems convert existing SEC data into XBRL. Ipedo then pulls the XBRL-tagged financial data from Edgar Online's I-Metrix platform, processes it, and delivers it to an XBRL-enhanced tool that's part of the BusinessObjects XI BI platform using Crystal Reports of BusinessObjects Web Intelligence. Users can then go on to design dashboards, scorecards or performance management applications.

Business Objects, which is publicly traded in the United States and Europe, was one of the first companies to begin filing its own financial information to the SEC directly in XBRL format.