It is often helpful to look at the broader world of technology to evaluate possibilities for evolution and revolution in accounting and finance, catalyzed by technology. Sometimes it is the subtle and unintended results of technology in practice that can lead to important change. Here are two stories.

How is a postcard different from a letter? “Why not both”?

The US Postal Service has a relatively new offering (started 2017) called “Informed Delivery”; you can see scanned images of the address side of household letter-sized mail, as well as see information about packages expected to be delivered that day. You can receive a daily email previewing what’s coming, view expected and recently delivered mail and packages on an app, or search online. While various services have provided virtual mail boxes for business travelers or vacationers or folks who like to RV or cruise or otherwise not be home (offering previews of mail, offering to scan selective contents and selectively forwarding the originals), this is the first systemic offering of its kind. There is an “angle”: the USPS also leverages this for encouraging businesses to do more, and now electronically integrated, hybrid traditional mail/electronic campaigns. Most of my traditional mail seems to go directly into the recycling bin.

What is the subtle change? When I’m away, I can make indirect actions, knowing that mail is being delivered that day for sure. But I have also been able to act hours and even days earlier when information was visible – codes for entry into systems that wanted to use mail for validation, for example – in that scan. What can go on the outside (exposed, unfortunately, to more potential interception) and what needs to stay on the inside will evolve as the environment is used more.

Technology as drives manual practice consistency

The USPS uses XML as part of the business integrated campaigns (Informed Delivery™ for Business Mailers) (https://postalpro.usps.com/mailing/techspecs). And we are more familiar with another area of XML designed for accounting and finance – XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language).

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s XBRL mandate for financial reporting requires that any number that appears in the Notes to the Financial Statements must be tagged – whether in a tabular presentation, within text, or even written out as words (as might be more common in commentary).

Today’s document management systems, which create the XBRL as a parallel process to the printed report, and which will be creating the integrated Inline XBRL that places XBRL-relate artefacts within the HTML itself to be transformed into XBRL instance documents, make the choice of presentation less of an issue. But those who create their XBRL after-the-fact find it a challenge to identify all of the necessary numbers in the less structured paragraphs of text.

It was certainly never stated that a goal of the XBRL mandate was to steer the visual financial report to make it easier to find the numbers. But it was reported that Filers in fact organized the presentation of their reports to pull numbers from paragraphs of text into tables, simplifying the identification of what needed to be tagged, creating new contextually defined tables for XBRL searching, and even helping non-XBRL users find numbers for analytics.

Similar results were found when companies were structuring their inventory for automated picking systems, but found the simple act of organization made the manual process easier, reducing the need for automation.

Unplanned for opportunity and unintended changes in behavior may be found when new technologies become available and implemented. How can we encourage technical advancements that might bring even more benefits indirectly than from the primary intended use?