IntelligentEnterprise: “What’s Holding XBRL Back?”

What's Holding XBRL Back? : "Ventana Research believes metadata tagging holds great promise for the future of business intelligence and business process automation. So why is it taking so long for the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to gain traction in the marketplace? We propose a number of issues that are holding XBRL back from reaching its potential. Ventana Research recommends that organizations unfamiliar with XBRL take advantage of new tagging tools to raise their understanding and perhaps practical use of this useful metadata taxonomy focused on financial analysis and transparency."

XBRL sounded like an obvious winner when it started getting talked about last year, but as the article says it's gained little traction since then despite the apparent benefits. This CFO.com article talks about how SEC submissions can now be submitted using XBRL but makes the comment that for individual organizations, there's not really much benefit yet from tagging your own data - the benefit really arises when others tag their data and therefore make it easier for you to analyze it. Still, it's one to watch though.