Using XBRL Technology to Extract Competitive Information from Financial Statements

The eXtensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, is a reporting format for the automatic and electronic exchange of business and financial data. In XBRL every single reported fact is marked with a unique tag, enabling a full computer-based readout of financial data. It has the potential to improve the collection and analysis of financial data for Competitive Intelligence (e.g., the profiling of publicly available financial statements). The article describes how easily information from XBRL reports can be extracted.