New technologies available to R&C companies offer the prospect of improved corporate decisionmaking, greater accountability, and more transparency. The result? Differentiation in the marketplace and better margins.
Second generation business intelligence systems are now helping companies monitor and manage individual transactions while new business integration technologies — beyond enterprise application integration (EAI) — are providing explicit business logic models to handle long-running transactions. Supply chain event management capability and radio frequency tags (RFID) track product delivery to provide a real-time view of operations and improve business transactions between companies. eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and web-oriented XML are helping to better integrate financial reporting, create greater reporting transparency, and improve communication with investors. In so doing, XBRL can help to boost stock value by eliminating information gaps and better managing investor expectations.