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Goodbye quarterly reports?
Bean counters call for web-based system...

By Gemma Simpson

Published: Thursday 09 November 2006

Six financial heavyweights have called for companies to overhaul financial reports to make them more suited to the internet age.

This could mean scrapping the traditional quarterly and annual reports.

The companies, including Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers, have joined forces to produce a report proposing a real-time reporting system to allow users to access and choose business information as easily as buying a book on Amazon.

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Details on what this new reporting model would look like are still hazy. But digitisation and the internet could enable users to customise the company information they receive and choose how it is presented, said the report.

A spokesman for business intelligence company Information Builders told silicon.com real-time reporting is a "nice concept but difficult to implement in practice due to cost and complexity".

The spokesman said he does expect to see such systems emerging within the next few years, although there will not be a sudden shift away from traditional reporting until a handful of the big players make a move into the digital arena. However, he did agree there is a lack of timeliness of information for the public and investors in the current system.