A Clearer Line of Communications for Telecommunications Reporting

What is one of the biggest non-value-added expenses burdening telecommunications companies (telecoms) today? Meeting regulatory-compliance reporting requirements. In the midst of the 21st century information revolution - in which the telecom industry is front and centre - nearly all of its companies still consolidate business information for reporting and analysis based on the same processes they used for the last quarter of a century: searching through page after page in document after document, then "cutting and pasting" and re-keying data into a consolidated location so it can be used for analysis or reporting. Today, such manual information preparation is akin to using a dial telephone as modern offi ce equipment. Rotary phones can do the basic job, butavailable services are limited.

The time has come to modernise the information-production processes used to create the hundreds and thousands of pages of telecom reporting each year. Many of the software applications telecoms already use for business-information production and consumption have the basic tools for re-engineering reporting processes: eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and Web services standards.

XBRL and Web services enable urgently needed process changes by facilitating automation of the current manual gathering and consolidation tasks used for both internal and external business-information distribution. This white paper describes how XBRL and Web services benefi t telecoms by enabling them to:

• Facilitate process change to increase internal and external reporting accuracy and effi ciency using existing software
• Accelerate achievement of goals that systems architecture changes are designed to accomplish
• Leverage the Internet to meet increasing internal and external reporting demands using existing systems and technologies