XBRL, CRM and Data-mining...Oh my!

Purpose:

My task this week is to post a discussion on resources obtained during my research for using XBRL within my department, which happens to be higher education. There is quite a bit of research available on the impact XBRL has on the financial community as conducted by those in higher education as well as information on incorporating training for XBRL taxonomy and requirements in university courses but nothing for use in higher education financial reporting. However, during my research I came across a conference proceeding from the 2012 14th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology introducing the idea of using XBRL for data-mining in higher education. (Ida, 2012). Which lead me down a path for looking at using XBRL for data-mining instead of just focusing on the use of an XBRL taxonomy for financial reporting in higher education.

Question:

Would it be possible to utilize the current systems for Client Relationship Management (CRM) and Student Information Systems (SIS) along with currently supported XML technology and a customized XBRL taxonomy to support data-mining in social media and data analysis for strategic enrollment management? 

Information:

I am currently working on a Master Event list that utilizes both my organization’s CRM system Student Information Systems supported by People soft and want to find a way to tie in the financial system to support the financial documents that accompany the event plan. I mention to the director of operations during one of our budget discussions my need for a master event list to track all the events through our office and be able to tie it to the financial documents for each of the events. She suggest using PeopleSoft CRM to support this and plan a meeting later to discuss in detail. During this follow up meeting we discuss how PeopleSoft will be utilized and how we can incorporate our scheduling software Connect that houses our rosters for the events into the same list making it a more robust feature for the entire office to use. Hold this thought it will play into the thought process I have later.

  

Currently my organization uses Kuali Financial Systems for higher education to manage all of the financial processes and information. In searching the KFS website and documentation obtained online, it appears that KFS supports XML, but there is no mention of support for XBRL at this time. There is support for importing XML information into the system to upload financial charges and export in XML format for reporting purposes, however no XBRL support documentation. So, I look at the PeopleSoft website and forum boards to see if there is a way to support the use of XML to tie the two together. I notice that there is support for XBRL in PeopleSoft for their financial modules, but found nothing on their CRM modules. At the same time looking for XBRL in higher education and PeopleSoft, I stumbled across yet another resource (in addition to the conference presentation by Ida for using XBRL in data mining in Japan) Educational Data Mining. This article focuses on using educational data mining (EDM) for analyzing how students learn with technology by “developing, researching, and applying computerized methods to detect patterns in large collections of educational data” (Scheuer, 2011). I looked into this a little farther and opened a giant can of worms of thought for myself. I found additional resources about EDM, one being the Educational Handbook for Data Mining which is a course (from what I could ascertain from the sample) is about relationship modeling and data mining form students interaction with web-based learning software, but most likely so much more. (Romero, Venura, Pechenizkiy, & Baker, 2011). With this, I research further into EDM and XBRL and find XBRL for Interactive Data: Engineering the Information Value Chain by Roger Debreceny which discusses the use of XBRL in business reporting and has a workflow diagram on the front cover that looks remarkably familiar to the diagram Anne drew for me to explain all of the software that connects the information that we will pull for the master events list.  I start thinking about the information discussed during the master event list planning using PeopleSoft and Connect, rosters and this newly discovered information on EDM to come to the conclusion that this project may grow much larger than me one day.

Conclusion: 

I will continue to build my master events list in PeopleSoft knowing it will most likely move to Talisma one day in the very near future and have a dash board the runs on the Business Intelligence interface (Talisma Campus Management Corp., 2012). I will include this pattern of thought in looking for a short term solution to combining financial data from one software that currently supports XML and our CRM that supports XML (Oracle.com, 2013).

Resources:

Campus Management Corp. (2012). Advanced Workspace Handout 2013. Retrieved from Talisma CRM Advanced Workspace Design: https://uisapp2.iu.edu/confluence-prd/download/attachments/210469145/Advanced+Workspace+Handout+2013.pdf

Debreceny, R., Felden, C., Ochocki, B., Piechocki, M., & Piechocki, M. (2009). XBRL for Interactive Data: Engineering the Information Value Chain. London: Springer.

Ida, M. (Feb. 2012). XBRL Financial Database for Higher Education Institutions. 2012 14th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT), (pp. pp.318,322, 19-22 ). PyeongChang: IEEE.org.

Indiana University Office of Admissions. (2011). Visit IU. Retrieved from Office of Admissions, Indiana University: http://admit.indiana.edu/visit/index.shtml

Lyons, D. (2009, November). Kuali Financial System: for higher educaiton, by higher education. KFS Basics - KFS Overview. Kuali Foundation.

Oracle. (2013). Oracle Technetwork Tutorials. Retrieved from Oracle.com: http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/fmw/bi/xmlp_ps/index.html

Oracle. (2013). PeopleSoft Campus Solutions 9.0 Feature Pack 3. Retrieved from Oracle: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/campus-solutions/campus-solutions-9-feature-pack-3-166151.html

Oracle Press Release. (2009, December 01). Oracle Announces General Availability of PepoleSoft Enterprise CRM for Higher Education 9.1. Retrieved from Oracle: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/041768

Romero, C., Venura, S., Pechenizkiy, M., & Baker, R. S. (2011). Handbook for Educational Data Mining. Boca Raton: CRC Press Taylor and Francis Group.

Scheuer, O. &. (2011). Educational Data Mining. Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning.

Talisma Campus Management Corp. (2012). Talisma Business Intelligence. Retrieved from Talisma.com: http://www.talisma.com/hi-in/products_services/talisma_crm/Pages/businessintelligence.aspx

Talisma Campus Management Corp. (2012). Talisma Events Management. Retrieved from Tlisma.com: http://www.talisma.com/en-us/products_services/talisma_crm/Pages/eventsmanagement.aspx

(2010). The Kuali Financial System: Community-Developed Software for Education. Kuali Foundation.

Wu, J., & Vasarhelyi, M. (n.d.). 5 XBRL: A New Tool For Electronic Financial Reporting. In R. U. Department of Accounting and Information Systems. New Jersey: Department of Accounting and Information Systems, Rugers University.

2013 US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy

Purpose:

Discuss the 2014 US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy in detail.

Questions:

What does it mean to my company? How does this work with our accounting software? Does my company have any unusual disclosures that would require special treatment?

Information:

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is responsible for ongoing development and maintenance of the US GAAP Financial Taxonomy (UGT). (Financial Accounting Standars Board (FASB), 2013) The taxonomy has grown exponentially over the years to more than 18,000 elements providing a greater level of detail over other taxonomies in use today. (Bartley, Chen, & Taylor, 2010) The latest UGT is available at this website:

http://www.fasb.org/cs/ContentServer?c=Page&pagename=FASB%2FPage%2FSectionPage&cid=1176160582485

US GAAP Taxonomy 2013

Each year a new taxonomy (UGT) is developed with recommended updates from the year prior and has been the case since 2009. “Each new taxonomy introduces many changes and options that could impact a company’s custom extension taxonomy.” (Active Disclosure, 2013) Every year the SEC approves the most current taxonomy after extensive review and announces the acceptance, generally in the early spring. The SEC adopted the use of the 2012 US GAAP Taxonomy (UGT) on March 26^th last year and prohibited the use of the 2009 taxonomy. (Active Disclosure, 2013) The SEC will start supporting the 2013 UGT on May 20^th and will discontinue its support of 2011 UGT at that time. (Active Discussion, 2013) This may be the SEC’s way of forcing companies to update their taxonomies and move away from the many customer taxonomy extensions to a more unified and comprehensive taxonomy. The latest version of the UGT contains the following changes and updates:

Development US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy (Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), 2013)

Development US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy (Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), 2013)

Each year the SEC strives to make improvements to the taxonomy to help improve the quality of the taxonomy and reduce inconsistencies. FASBA has made over 4,000 changes to the taxonomy, (Active Disclosure, 2013) this alone will make implementation or conversion to XBRL a daunting task requiring additional and comprehensive review of the financial statements tagged.

In 2008 the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a phase-in reporting mandate for all public companies to use XBRL format for their supplemental filings.  (Bartley, Chen, & Taylor, 2010) On January 30, 2009 the SEC adopted the rules requiring firms to financial statements in XBRL format and make them available on their website if they maintained one. (Ly, 2012) From March 2005 to April 2008 over 75 companies filed their financial documents in XBRL format as part of the Voluntary Filing Program (VFP) established by the SEC in preparation for a full implementation of the mandate (XBRL.US). During this time, of the companies that filed in XBRL about half the companies implemented the required changes and tagging through outsourcing to companies that provided this service. While the other half purchased software and assembled teams from multiple departments to take up the daunting task devising a plan and implementing it internally. (XBRL.US)  

At this time the mandate is for publicly traded companies only so non-profit companies are not included in this first round of implementation. Right now I am a fiscal officer with Indiana University (IU) and have survived a recent transition from the custom financial software developed by IU, Financial Information Systems (FIS) to an open-sourced Kuali Financial Systems developed by Kuali Foundation. This is the foundation’s first open source financial software for higher education. (The Kuali Financial System: Community-Developed Software for Education, 2010) Aside from providing a more comprehensive financial system that addresses the needs of a higher education financial structure, it is able to support XML file tagging for import and export.

(The Kuali Financial System: Community-Developed Software for Education, 2010)

I have a feeling that one of the added attractions to adopting this new software is the ability to use XML formatting with the university’s financial data potentially lending an adaption to XBRL for financial reporting standards in the future.

Indiana University is required to file financial disclosure reports with the SEC, however I do not believe they are required to file in XBRL format at this time. A list of their reports can be found through the Treasurer’s Office website at: http://treasurer.indiana.edu/investordisclosure/pubdisclosure_filings.html

 The Annual Disclosure Document relates primarily to the bond issues and includes disclosures pertaining to the university’s audited financial statements.

(The Trustees of Indiana University, December 2012)

There are several areas that would require special treatment and XBRL extensions through customization simply because of the nature of the organization. The UGT was developed primarily around Commercial and Industrial, insurance, and banking financial activities which would not include reference or tagging for student fees, authorized degree programs, state appropriated or contract and grant revenue or restricted, unrestricted and general funds. The UGT would however provide tagging for the bonds and certificates section of the disclosure statement.

The XBRL taxonomy is quiet immense and not entirely intuitive, but I was able to locate the section pertaining to investments and securities.     

2013 US GAAP Taxonomy

Assumptions:

The disclosure document that accompanies the financial statements is lengthy and I really and not able to imagine the complicated task of tagging all the pertinent information necessary to truly allow for an accurate analysis by searching in XBRL format to compare organizations across the industry. However, I can see where the XBRL format would be useful in internal analysis between all eight of the IU campuses. If the university could implement an automated tagging system through KFS the process of tagging the financial statements would be much less daunting than the disclosure documents.

Conclusion:

The US GAAP Financial Taxonomy is a complicated comprehensive set of elements that do not encompass the vast majority of the companies and organizations currently filing with the SEC. I can see the frustration and slow buy-in that companies have exhibited. There would be an enormous amount of effort expended to comply with the SEC regulations with little ROI for the university at this point. The benefit would come from early implementation and preparation through utilizing the KFS open-source software to help automate tagging and potentially adopting XBRL as a research project to give added incentive for implementation and adoption by the entire organization.

References:

Active Disclosure. (2013, March 27). Adoption of the 2013 US GAAP Taxonomy: Are You Ready? Retrieved from ActiveDisclosure: http://activedisclosure.com/adoption-of-the-2013-us-gaap-taxonomy-are-you-ready/

Active Discussion. (2013, April 23). SEC Extends Deadline for 2013 UGT. Retrieved from ActiveDiscussion.com: http://activedisclosure.com/sec-extends-deadline-for-2013-ugt/

Bartley, J., Chen, A. Y., & Taylor, E. Z. (2010). A Comparison of XBRL Filings to Corporate 10-Ks - Evidence from the Voluntary Filing Program. Price WaterhouseCoopers.

Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). (2013). Development US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy. Retrieved from Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Taxonomy (XBRL): http://www.fasb.org/jsp/FASB/Page/SectionPage&cid=1176160285739

Financial Accounting Standars Board (FASB). (2013). FASB US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy Release Notes Version 2013. FASB.

Indiana University. (2013, May). Investor Disclosure. Retrieved from Indiana University Office fo the Treasurer: http://treasurer.indiana.edu/investordisclosure/financials.html

Indiana University. (2013, May). Office of the Treasurer. Retrieved from Indiana University: http://treasurer.indiana.edu/

Indiana University Financial Management Services. (2012). Indiana University 2011-2012 Financial Report. Bloomington: Indiana University .

Ly, K. (2012). Extensible Business Reporting Language for Financial Reporting (XBRL FR) and Financial Analysts' Activity: Early Evidence. Academy of Accounting & Financial Studies Journal (V16, 2), 25-43.

Lyons, D. (2009, November). Kuali Financial System: for higher education, by higher education. KFS Basics - KFS Overview. Kuali Foundation.

Parrish, S., & Horn, K. (2009, November 17-18). Kuali Financial Systems: Kuali Days Conference. Budget Construction Presentation. Kuali Foundation.

(2010). The Kuali Financial System: Community-Developed Software for Education. Kuali Foundation.

The Trustees of Indiana University. (December 2012). Annual Disclosure Statement. Bloomington: Indiana University.

Wall Street Journal. (2012, November 13). Companies Grow Weary of XBRL. Retrieved from CFOJournal (Blog): blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2012/11/13/companies-grow-weary-of-xbrl/

XBRL.US. (n.d.). XBRL and Public Company Business Information: Case Studies.