You are serving as a liaison between accounting and IT. Your company is required to use XBRL for external financial reporting. IT would like to use XBRL integrated tagging and has asked for funding for an XBRL database

The accounting department doesn't see why IT needs funding for another new database.
What are the benefits of XBRL integrated tagging for internal use? Why would IT need a new XBRL database? What would you say at your meeting with accounting and IT?

Answer: You could prepare a presentation on the benefits of XBRL and the benefits of integrated tagging over bolt-on tagging to your organization in general and accounting department in particular.
The integrated tagging benefits to organization include:
• The reporting cost is reduced.
• Speed of generating XBRL reports is increased
• More accurate intelligent internal reports are created.

9.31
Mark, chief financial officer (CFO) of iElectronics, and Brittany, chief information officer (CIO), would like to take advantage of XBRL technology for their company financial and accounting functions. They are both agreed that the company has several financial reporting problems. They prepared the following list of problems:
• The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports have been late for the last two years.
• Their international subsidiaries, in Canada and Mexico have been late sending their monthly closing information to the company's headquarter in Saint Louis Missouri.
• Their internal reports regarding key performance indicators (KPI) are also late and sometime inaccurate.
• Company's reported financial data are not detailed enough for the company's analysts.

IT department programmers have been able to use XML to help the financial department but the result is not satisfactory.

You have learned about XBRL in your accounting information course and recently attended in a XBRL workshop. Mark and Brittany are very excited to learn about the XBRL possibilities for helping iElectronics. In the last Friday meeting, Brittany asked "So, what is XBRL and how could it help us?" After a brief explanation, you added that XBRL uses XML data tags plus some additional tags to describe financial statements. You assured them that the XBRL could solve company's reporting problems.
"How is that possible?" asked Mark. You responded that you would be more than happy to prepare a presentation for next meeting, providing more information about XBRL and explain how it could provide assistance to the iElectronics reporting and financial data exchange. "Ok, this sounds great," responded Mark. Brittany asked you to include in your presentation the following topics.
a. What is XBRL?
b. How does it relate to XML?
c. What are integrated and Bolt-on tagging?
d. How does XBRL could solve the listed problems?
e. What are the advantages to iElectronics for adapting XBRL?
Prepare a summary that includes answers to the Brittany's questions.

You can use this chapter information to prepare your presentation. Regarding the last question (i.e. What are the advantages to iElectronics for adopting XBRL?), you can focus your presentation on:
• Environmental factors – for example, industry characteristics (such as level competition) and trading partners (such as pressure from vendors)
• Organization structure factors – for example, organization resources.
• Technological factors – for example, the level of technology used in the organization.