Dead tree reports cannot deliver XBRL

Just in case you are still in the dark over what XBRL is, and how it will eventually change the way information is sourced from electronic documents...

Specific items of information in an electronic document such as an annual report are described and identified by XBRL tags. The tags are standardised, enabling data from multiple documents to be analysed and compared quickly and easily, even in different languages. This suggests even less reliance on paper-based annual reports and more interest in online HTML reports.

Analysts will get audited data in a consistent format which will take away much of the hard work. They will like it because it enables much deeper disclosure of reporting information.

Analyst take-up and adaptation of their internal processes relies on sector-specific national then global take up of XBRL. This requires of regulators from around the world the foresight to plan its introduction and collaborate on a wide scale. Until there is a wide base of XBRL formatted information out there, analysts do not presently have the incentive to take much notice and change their research activities to leverage XBRL benefits.

United Kingdom
In March 2006 the UK government announced the use of XBRL for corporate tax returns and supporting accounts should be mandatory. From April 2011 all companies making a Company Tax Return must file their tax returns online using a specified XBRL data standard. This will require some determined planning on the part of these companies.

USA
The SEC in the USA already have around 500 companies providing interactive data reports for fiscal periods ending on or after 15 June 2009. More will be doing the same over the next two years.

Unusually, Singapore, India and China have a head start over the US.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has been at the forefront of XBRL development and have plentiful advice for companies on how companies should approach integrating XBRL into their reporting process.
www.pwc.com/gx/en/xbrl/index.jhtml

So where does that leave our dwindling tree population? Though there is much pleasure to be gained from receiving a well designed and printed annual report to satisfy your investment decision - which will eventually be discarded or hopefully consigned to an appropriate paper recycling resource - there comes a point where we have to ask ourselves as we drive around in our new hybrid vehicles “why are we consuming vast amounts of energy and resources to produce something which is also available online in a more information rich and accessible format?”

In the words of Al Gore...
“The climate crisis... is our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level”.


Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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The writing is on the wall for ink on paper (in London and Sydney particularly)

I know we’ve had (note past tense) a recession, but now it’s all looking good (at least for the next two weeks according to various journos in that esteemed business newspaper the Financial Review) and we can start planning a bright new future.

The trees in Australia didn’t get too much of a reprieve this year, despite my efforts, as there still seems to be an abundance of paper-based June year end annual reports about to be printed in the next couple of months. The printers around town however will still cry poor. Quantities are down and the digital printers are massing at the gate. The writing is on the wall for ink on paper.

Onward and upward with online and HTML. So where does your company stand in the online reporting stakes? What investment has it made in its most expensive and important investor communication of the year? Yes I know there are many excuses that are trotted out in response to this question - We’re not ready for it yet.  We’re too small. We got hit badly by the recession. We don’t have the time. Our shareholder base is too old to appreciate this type of thing. Our IT guy looked into it and said it wasn’t worth his time getting involved. It’s too expensive. An insufficient number of our shareholders have access to broadband. Our company secretary’s brother owns a printing company. You know what I mean.

It’s no understatement to say that the majority of companies are approaching it in a gradual way. Read that as slow. The easy way out for companies courtesy of an ‘interactive PDF/html’ version has slowed progress and diverted companies from seeking best practice. In fact there is a strong argument that an ‘interactive PDF/html’ version may be counter productive as it does not provide a great experience for the investor, who may just be tempted to revert to the printed version. Also, I haven’t met up with too many companies who seem overly bothered about whether their competitors are doing something better than they are. Oh well.

The reported take up of online reporting by shareholders, whether in London or Sydney, is reported to be 80 percent. It is a concern however to read an article by Clare Harrison in IR Magazine where she states that only around 5 percent are ‘happy to receive the annual report electronically’! I suppose it depends on how you interpret ‘happy’. But why only 5 percent? Does it really take this long to wean shareholders away from print and have them embrace the benefits of accessing reporting information online? I can only think that so many have been afflicted by the limited experience of PDF and ‘interactive PDF/html’ reports touted by many suppliers around the globe.

How long will it take for best practice html ‘mini website’ reports to gain majority approval? Any bets?
What will it take to achieve this? How long will it take for printed annual reports to be reduced to black & white text-only documents for compliance and registration purposes? I got my hands on the 2008 Apple annual report (Form 10-K) recently - all 102 pages of it - all black & white, text only, on rather thin bond paper with a couple of big staples through it. The way of the future?

The html report, just like a website, offers considerable scope for almost unlimited functionality and the ability to customise to specific requirements - graph building tools, charting, print baskets, videos, podcasts - all of which enhance the user experience and leave the expensive days of print far behind.

I raised the new opportunities afforded by XBRL more than a year ago to many companies in Sydney. I have also included details on our website and in blogs, but to date have not received a single enquiry. The benefits are reportedly substantial, where specific items of data are ‘tagged’ for recognition, thereby enabling investors, analysts, accountants, auditors etc to find, compare and analyse data faster and more efficiently. By rights it should enable essential people like accountants to do their jobs faster, thereby saving clients money - but where have we heard that before?

At the end of the day money rules. If only someone could produce an html online report for the price of those nasty ‘interactive PDF/html’ versions. If you’re in London check out report-axs.co.uk and speak with Paul Sillers. In Sydney check out report-axs.com and speak with me. If you’re unfortunate enough not to live in these two highly desirable locations speak to me anyway as we don’t even need a face-to-face meeting to get results you may have only dreamed of. Until now.



Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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What’s happening in the world of annual reporting this year?

The global market turmoil, which is hanging around like a bad smell, is making investors more risk averse and more cautious. They are demanding more information and insight to a company’s 2008-09 performance, its potential to ride out the downturn and its ability to accelerate when the green light once again illuminates our darkness, the race resumes and the world becomes a better place.

We are experiencing extremes. Some companies are investing fewer dollars in communications and as a consequence are coming off the radar and finding themselves back at the starting gates. Some companies however, are taking advantage of this and ramping up their presence to investors and gaining new exposure.

Recent AIRA survey figures reveal that 49% of companies are maintaining the same IR budget for 2009, 37% are reducing and 15% are increasing. My money’s on the 15%.

Companies generally identify a need to try harder this year to capture the attention of a disengaged investment community that has either switched off in disgust or needs some severe prodding. Just like starting the engine of a ’63 EH model Holden with a suspect battery.

Companies need more face-to-face meetings with investors and analysts. Pile them on and deliver them in a more convincing manner. They need to be more future focused. Explain what’s going to happen in your neck of the woods when the markets start to climb. Are you going to be up there with the new achievers or left behind with a flat battery and a puncture? What plans are you putting in place to prepare for the upturn? They want to know.

Online is increasingly the place to access company information as opposed to the printed report – 80-90% of shareholders now say so – the days of screwed up annual reports folded and wedged in mail boxes or waiting at your local post office are rapidly disapppearing, to the great relief of many of Australia Post’s finest.

Video is still the new kid on the block and seemingly resisting exploitation and exposure. A great pity as it is more important than ever to now deliver a convincing glimpse of the company leaders and the manner in which they are responding to changing markets. Photos of the Chairman and CEO in their best suits with frozen smiles captured in print no longer tell a suitably convincing story of who they are, their body language and how convincing they are when they speak.

Didn’t the message get through to you IR professionals? Do you have your eyes closed and your hands over your ears? No? Then tell me why more than 50% of listed companies persist with publishing their report online in PDF format? Don’t start me on this one. Nor do I want to discuss interactive PDFs. On the third day God made interactive PDFs and the world ground to a halt. Adopt HTML and go to heaven. End of story.

This year only a modest number of companies are considering HTML. Seemingly only the brave. The pioneers. Those destined for success with happy shareholders. Get the message? Good.

Explain this to me. Why is it that so few companies have a direct link from the home page on their website to the shareholder centre or the annual report? Images of three seated monkeys come flooding back.

IR professionals need to realise that there is a profound shift from reporting to online dialogue with investors using feedback forms and/or Web 2 technologies. The smell of printing ink is being replaced with digital technologies to enhance user experience courtesy of HTML online annual reports having audio, video, animation, interactive charting and print baskets.

The ‘first generation’ HTML online reports that appeared in 2001-2002 did not make much of a lasting impact here in Australia. Check our turnover for those years – thank you AMP, Cashcard, Commonwealth Bank, OPSM and Perpetual. It has taken six years and a change in reporting Legislation to finally get HTML annual reports back on the radar.

The popularity of the ‘shareholder review’ is increasing and demonstrating that it is more relevant and palatable to the majority of investors than the traditional annual report. Sadly, a bit like most Australian investors, it seems to be putting on more weight as each year passes.

Companies are looking seriously at a ‘reporting suite’ comprising low spec (b&w) printed annual reports, a glossy shareholder review and an online HTML presentation of both. This comprises a landing page with the ability to navigate to each document – see http://info.westpac.com.au/annualreport2008/ which we produced this year.

There is a perception from company secretaries that producing a shareholder review adds more work and requires ‘marketing’ skills that they don’t possess which compels them to persist with the traditional annual report format. Where is the marketing team when you want them?

Printed annual reports are expensive for the low quantity produced (10-20% of what it used to be pre-Legislation change) meaning that more and more printers are stepping in with digital printing presses geared to low quantity production.

Analysts and investors alike recognise that they must look beyond the poor performance figures to the more important information that reveals the future potential of the company. Will they find yours quickly and conveniently and be suitably impressed by it?

If you have any doubts call me. Australia Eastern Standard Time 61 2 8256 3999. And don’t ask me about PDFs.


Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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The price we pay for shareholders requesting a printed annual report

Manufacturing 26 sheets of A4-size paper emits the same amount of greenhouse gas as driving a car one kilometre.
Source: Clean Up Australia

One tree is used to produce 100 copies of an average (83 page) annual report.
Source: Chartered Secretaries Australia

More water is consumed to produce one tonne of paper than any other commodity.

One litre of water is used to produce seven sheets of A4-size paper.

It takes 13.5 Gj of energy to produce one tonne of paper – this is equivalent to using 552 litres of heavy crude oil.


Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Registry costs crippling you?

If you are an Australian listed company I have a question to ask you. When was the last time you queried the prices you are paying your registry to produce the Chairman’s letter, Notice of Meeting and Proxy form, bundle it all together with the printed annual report and then mail it?

In conversations with many companies in Sydney it appears they view this as a necessary part of the annual reporting process which has to be paid for - no questions asked. I’m also surprised how many complain about the poor service they receive and yet do little if anything about it – this complaining has been rampant for years. How do the share registries get away with it?

All this seems symptomatic of a market which only has two big share registry contenders and a smaller one. Companies are frightened of moving away from a supplier who is seen to be offering ‘mission critical’ services and where it is difficult to distinguish between the two major players. A nice position to be in if you are one of the share registries. With so little competition, it is easy for standards to fall and pricing levels to rise.

It’s a little known fact that, as we ourselves have proved, these cost and service levels can easily be improved. My company has taken this to heart and, in collaboration with one of the better printing companies and mailing houses in Sydney is offering an audit and cost evaluation service encompassing the entire design, print and mailing processes. We identify, for example, new cost, service and turnaround efficiencies can be realised, where it is not uncommon for the mailing process to be sub contracted to third party mailing houses and then passed on to the client with a healthy handling fee.

The pressure on designers and printers to reduce costs in 2009 is enormous – now it is time to look to your share registry to open up new cost efficiencies.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Your 2009 Annual Report – important things to consider

1 Companies are looking to realise new cost efficiencies across all design and production processes – but where are they going to find them and who will point them out? 

2 Shareholders will be seeking answers to many questions and will be expecting companies to be forthcoming with them – this is not the time to be shy and withholding. 

3 Online reporting is firmly on the agenda but many companies have yet to understand and embrace the benefits of HTML reports – otherwise known as mini-websites.

4 High on listed companies’ agendas must be the future vision of the company leaders, their confidence in the company’s survival strategies, and their ability to articulate the company’s future prospects. 

5 Shareholders have now had a taste of accessing company results online – persist with a PDF of the printed report at your peril. 

6 The last six months in particular have rewritten the rules on what a company requires from their annual report supplier – designer; IT consultant; web developer; market analyst; brand manager; expert on email management and print logistics; litho and digital print maestro – and if they don’t possess these skills you’re probably missing out on some critical advice and cost saving opportunities. 

7 The advent of online reporting is making planners and contributors of content rethink the structure and level of content for presentation and consumption online.

8 The introduction of Shareholder Reviews back in 2006 has caught the attention of companies and shareholders alike as a concise and easy way for investors to grasp the essential information on a company’s performance and prospects without the clutter of intricate financial data. 

9 It’s highly likely that if the annual report is found wanting this year it will prompt shareholders to question the reasons why they are holding on to the company’s shares and look around for more attractive and more stable opportunities.

10 The search for cost savings will see some printing and mailing tasks performed by share registries migrate to other more nimble and service-oriented suppliers.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Thar’s a lynchin’ party heading fo’ the AeeGeeM sheriff!

There will be a bit of fun and games at company AGMs this year. Many chairmen, chairwomen, CEOs and directors are not exactly the flavour of the month with shareholders. It’s bad enough for shareholders just watching their life savings slip quietly away and those eagerly anticipated retirement plans evaporate. It’s worse when the company bosses don’t seem to be communicating too well their plan of action, their admission of slow responses and their personal grief at what has been lost. It’s worse still when no half yearly report arrives in the mail, not even a shareholder newsletter, not even on the company’s website. And when the annual report finally arrives stuffed in the mailbox, it’s just a plain old bit of print looking remarkably similar to last year’s report, with its partner in crime a dumb old PDF of the printed report posted on the company website. The carefully posed photos of the Chairman and CEO feature less of a smile this year to match the rather predictable intro to the Chairman’s Report, along the lines of “The 2008/2009 year has been a tough one for your company. The global recession has bitten hard and taken its toll on our earnings. Consequently the payment of dividends...”

These scary times are dividing company boards and senior management into three distinct categories.

1/. “Things are looking really bad out there, we’re all suffering, so I guess we’d better do as little as possible, say nothing to our shareholders until asked... perhaps they won’t call us and it will go away soon”.

2/. “We’re sort of getting through these trying times okay, but our performance has definitely been hit. We’ll just do the same as last year, no more. We’ll play it safe, make ourselves available when asked and conserve our money”.

3/. “This is a great opportunity to get shareholders on our side and influence new investors while our competitors are distracted. Time to communicate to them in a compelling manner that we are ready to tackle the market challenges and have invested in powerful strategies that will accelerate our recovery when markets recover”.

Which one is most likely to get shot up by the rampaging mob?

Shareholders will scrutinise those digitally captured frozen smiles. In this youtube-friendly age however they are really anticipating more than a static image. A bit of video with movement so they can check out the body language, with spoken words ‘direct from the horse’s mouth’ they can play over and over again to make a judgement on their sincerity. “But many of our shareholders are old and don’t have internet access and we don’t have all of their email addresses” you say. Horse shit. 80 to 90 percent of Australian shareholders have opted to receive their annual report online. They won’t settle for any excuses this year. They want the facts. They want the truth. And they want it in plain simple language, not some cleverly written PR masterpiece that bears little resemblance to reality. Companies need to remember that there is much anger out there. And that anger is unlikely to go away this side of the October/November AGM season. Colts and Winchesters are being polished in anticipation of some possum hunting.

And don’t listen to those online purveyors of snake oil – an interactive PDF just won’t do it. It’s got to be HTML unless you want some buckshot in your breeches.

And if some shareholders really, really want to see the full financials in print – how are you going to supply them? Typeset or printed straight from the MSW Word file? Colour or black & white? Laser printed in-house not even with a stiff cover, in the hope that shareholders will be so disappointed they won’t ask for one again?

So are all of your plans this year dependent on working within a lower budget? So how are you going to achieve this? Pressure the poor designer? Pressure the printer? Have you investigated, for example, how to reduce those expensive mailing and processing costs incurred by your share registry – NOM, proxy, Chairman’s letter, fly sheet, shrink wrapping etc? Are you aware of how to tackle this? Perhaps now is a good time for us to talk.

Time to hit the saddle. When it comes to the day of your AGM take my advice and keep a careful eye out for some mean looking strangers in town calling themselves the Tilburn gang. The legend lives on.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Online annual reporting in 2009 – mediocrity or innovation?

Will creativity suffer the slow death of diminishing budgets this year or will innovation come to its rescue? I’ve been in the annual reporting business here in Australia since 1980 and witnessed quite a few changes. In 2000 HTML online reporting was making inroads in the US from which I took great inspiration. When my company Heywood Innovation introduced HTML online annual reporting (mini websites) to Australia in 2001 with Cashcard, it prompted many enquiries the following year which resulted in us designing and producing a new era of HTML reports for the likes of AMP, Commonwealth Bank and Perpetual – all prominent and influential companies with substantial shareholder bases. It seemed as though we were faced with a huge new opportunity. A positive renaissance of reporting. How wrong I was.



The dot com crash of March 2000 to October 2002 didn’t help matters. Despite the economy gaining strength in the following years, 2003 to 2007 witnessed annual reporting budgets slashed to the bone and mediocrity gaining the upper hand. All of a sudden the prospect of shareholders having access to a new and highly efficient means of accessing financial information meant very little. What caused this apparent denial of shareholder interest and care? Did the powers-that-be decide that shareholders meant very little in the grand scheme of things and that they are at best a minor irritation unworthy of serious consideration? I rather think so. Investor communications have been in the doldrums for many years. Despite much pontificating here in Australia by the respective industry bodies the IR efforts of many companies leave much to be desired. This has not been helped by the dominance of the share registry market by its two well known players Computershare and Link. Admirable for their introduction of new technologies and processes to speed up the transfer of information between company and shareholder, it is significant however that in the past five to seven years not a single company I have spoken with has had anything positive to say about either. Service appears to be a real issue.

I digress. The change in Legislation in late 2007 that made online the default medium for annual reporting was an admirable initiative by government to make reporting less expensive and less onerous a task. Despite the fabulous opportunities to embrace cutting edge online design, animation and video, Australian companies however are proving very slow to leverage the opportunity. Consequently the results are a little predictable with many companies only moving to the half way stage of ‘interactive imaged solutions’ perpetuating the aggravation of trying to make pages from the printed report work on screen. A bit like pitting Robert Louis Stephenson’s Rocket against the Bullet train. Is it too soon since the Legislation changed? Probably so. Innovation, like change, takes time in the real world.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Companies not responding to climate change

I was intrigued to read an article last week describing how a coalition of institutional investors and public interest groups in the US are pressuring nine companies to develop and disclose how they are responding to climate change.

The nine have been identified as lagging behind what the group consider to be appropriate reporting on the business challenges and are failing to engage effectively with shareholders on the issue.

I predict we will see many more pressure groups put companies on their ‘climate watch’ lists, as it becomes increasingly obvious that poor environmental practice has the potential to seriously impact on share prices.

ExxonMobil, Chevron and General Motors are three of the nine companies.

The group sentiment is that companies’ lack of climate risk disclosure is as great a risk as that of the subprime crisis.

I guess it is inevitable that a company’s environmental initiatives, overall strategy and ability to keep shareholders informed of these have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. These however face the prospect of being derailed by focus on the continuing mayhem in the financial markets. The prospects of a significant global deal on climate change looks increasingly unlikely. Sadly good environmental practice is initiated from wealth rather than from poverty. And a climate deal is all about imposing substantial costs.

I can’t help wondering how Chinese investors feel about the one new coal-fired power station that gets commissioned every week?

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Are we in for a big dose of annual reporting mediocrity?

Recessions have a habit of putting extreme pressure on people. Take your typical IR professional. The company has taken a nose dive. Shares are worth considerably less than they were in 2008. Shareholders are not happy and there is a groundswell of activism. Membership of the Australian Shareholders Association rises in anticipation of a dog fight. The company’s executive remuneration policies suddenly look out of synch with these recessionary times, and don’t the shareholders know it. Strangely the ‘people at the top’ don’t quite share your views on the matter. Communications to shareholders remain infrequent and have failed to deliver the admissions, information, strategies and insight from the CEO’s mouth they so dearly need to hear. The more senior and vocal shareholders build up a head of steam and make the phone call, lambasting IR and executive teams and generally blowing a valve that leaves junior staff lost for words and ruing the day they entered the world of IR. The press are unrelenting in their criticism of your industry, company and CEO, revelling in the firestorm that has clouded the previous years’ stellar performance, now a distant memory. Calls to prominent jornalists become lost in the queue. No-one wishes to discuss the AGM with you despite it promising to be the company levelling event of the year, perhaps with a record number of shareholders in attendance demanding than a cup of coffee and a biscuit. Thoughts of sacrificial swords loom large. The phone rings on.  

Investor Relations professionals are presently under immense pressure to smoothe the waters, pacify shareholders and maintain their company on the investor radar.

The annual report which over recent years has kept a modest face will, in 2009 and probably 2010 also, be under more scrutiny than ever before and has a very hard job to perform.

So how will companies approach the annual report this year? The pessimists among us will bet their dollars on the ‘same as last year, don’t rock the boat, and for heaven’s sake don’t make it look as though we spent any money on it’ approach. The optimists, and I am confident that there are some of you out there, will seek expert opinion on how to realise ‘more for less’ based on the following:

> cost savings across the entire annual reporting process
> an intelligent presentation without the designer decoration, that is sympathetic to circumstances yet confident in its ability to tackle the future
> a comprehensive and convincing HTML online annual report (mini website) from which shareholders can access information easily and quickly
> a centrepiece Q&A video with the Chairman and CEO who answer specific questions in a frank and open manner on the company’s position, its ability to survive and succeed, and how it will achieve this
> a decision on how to present the report in hard copy form for those 10-20% of shareholders still requesting it – do we produce a colour annual report, a black & white one or a discreet Shareholder Review in an easily digested format?

Times change. Markets change. And so must the annual report. It has a hard job to perform this year and warrants advice from experts to not only provide new cost efficiencies but take it to a level that satisfies the information needs of concerned investors and reinforces confidence in the company’s ability to forge ahead when markets recover.

So are you a pessimist or an optimist? Your decision will most *certainly influence your shareholders’ decision making later this year. 

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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2009 annual reports face intense scrutiny from investors and analysts

It is inevitable that companies will slash their 2009 investor communications budgets as they grapple with risk averse investors who are seriously concerned about the future of their investments and the ability of listed companies to weather the financial storm.

BUDGETS SQUEEZED + SHAREHOLDERS MORE DEMANDING

Companies will demand more for less and need reassurance that despite lower budgets their spending on IR activities is highly effective.

How will this translate as the year unfolds? Fewer roadshows. More shareholder analysis despite the high perceived costs. More frequent communication with investors. More focus on the annual report and its content, which has a hard job to do this year and will be under intense scrutiny from both investors and analysts.

The value of a company’s annual report will be much higher this year. Why?
Because it needs to achieve the following:

A frank and honest understanding of the company’s position
> For many companies the annual report is the sole source of information from which an investor can accurately glean a comprehensive understanding of the company, how it has been impacted by market change, its financial health, the competency of its team driving the company forward, its vision, the strategies that have been put in place to protect its interests in stressed markets and its future potential. Investors will perceive the annual report to have much greater value this year as a means of guiding thei investing decisions.

Outline strategies that are in place
> Reveal strategies the company leaders have put in place to strengthen its position and minimise damage to its business, brand and investment potential

Forward looking
> The report will need to be more forward looking than previous years in order to convince investors the company has adapted to change and is strategically positioned to benefit from recovering markets.

Investors want reassurance that companies are being very honest and realistic when it comes to explaining their state of affairs and strategies that are in place to weather deteriorating market conditions, protect value and position for future growth when markets start to recover hopefully in the latter part of 2009.

The need for companies to engage in regular communication with investors will prompt them to consider half year reports and quarterly reports. It goes without saying that those companies who are willing to keep investors regularly informed with accurate and up to the minute information will engage more positively with the investment community.

It is a sure bet that the expertise of IR professionals will be sorely tested this year. Newcomers to the industry will probably have a ‘baptism of fire’ as markets are predicted to drop even lower before they get better.

This suggests that the successful investor communications businesses in 2009 will be those who can adapt to change, be able to work within lower budgets yet deliver much more, have comprehensive understanding of the challenges facing IR professionals and be totally attuned to working in the online arena to deliver competent HTML online reports as part of the investor communications mix. We’re ready for it.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Does digital printing produce better quality results than litho printing?

More than 400 print and procurement managers in the UK, Germany, France and the US were recently asked the above question by IT research company Gartner. The responses indicated that digital delivers both better image quality and better value for money. On a scale of 1 ‘poor quality’ to 7 ‘excellent quality’ toner-based digital scored an average of 5.68 with offset the lowest at 5.17.

What does this mean for annual report printing?

Quality
In Australia, the last few years has seen digital printing become a serious contender in the print quality stakes. As regards annual report printing however, with my hand held firmly on my heart, in my own experience it has not yet beaten litho on quality bu is getting close. There are special considerations when designing for digital printing. It does not like large areas of solid or tinted colour, otherwise ‘banding’ will result. Even the mighty iGen3 press from Fuji Xerox, something of an industry standard in Australia, hasn’t found an answer to this achilles heel of digital printing. Overall however, quality is to a very good commercial standard. I estimate that if you took them to task, more than 50% of investor relations professionals would not be able to identify any real quality differences.

Value for money
Digital beats litho on price if you are printing less than around 300 full colour annual reports. Above 300 quantity, there are litho printers in Sydney who can easily better the digital price. Above 1,000 quantity, digital is not in the running.

Where digital really scores is when a reprint is required. Perhaps the share registry underestimated the quantity of reports and you suddenly need another 200 urgently. Reprinting this quantity litho is a very expensive exercise. It takes a lot of time to set up a litho press and get the job ready, where printing plates have to be registered and ink coverage on the paper optimised. It is not unusual for a pallet of paper to be wasted in this process. With digital printing it is a much faster and easier process to reload the files and print 200. And if you select 200 quantity, 200 is what you get, thereby saving a a significant amount of paper.

The future of annual report printing
Legislation in the USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand has made online the default delivery method for annual reports unless shareholders specifically request a hard copy version. This has seen the quantity of printed reports plummet - in Australia by 80-90%. These increasingly small quantities are more and more likely to be printed digitally. It is inevitable that with the R&D funds pouring into it, digital printing or something very similar, will replace litho printing. How many years away is this? Probably quite a few because litho has been around for many years and isn’t going to give up its market share without a big fight.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Why choose HTML for an online annual report?

Reasons why HTML is the obvious choice
Best practice starts with an HTML annual report. To all intents and purposes these are commonly referred to as mini-websites. Why is HTML the preferred format for an online annual report? Is it because billions of people view websites every day and don’t complain too much about them? Quite a few of these people are shareholders of Australian companies. Just think, if they’re relatively happy with looking at websites, it probably means they’d be happy looking at your online HTML annual report!

What are the key reasons for websites having become the global favourite means of accessing information online?
1/. It’s fast
2/. It’s easy
3/. You can include audio and video files

The challenges facing PDF reports
Basically, there’s nothing better than HTML. It would take a brave man or woman to argue that there is something better. Yet some do. For many years listed companies relied on a quick and easy PDF of their annual report courtesy of Adobe Acrobat to satisfy shareholder needs.  Although a wonderful tool to get documents from A to B by email, the shortcomings of viewing PDFs of information heavy annual reports have been well documented:

1/. Slow download
2/. Need to zoom in and out to be able to read text
3/. Need to scroll up and down to read columns of text

It’s a bit like listening to music on an old 8-track player from the ’70s in preference to an iPod. But in PDF’s defence it is an inexpensive way of getting your annual report online and keeping the ASX happy... but only if you care little for your shareholders’ welfare. The basic problem is that most printed annual reports are portrait format while PC screens are landscape format. A bit like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Several years ago several bright minded individuals started to think of ways to improve PDF annual reports. So onto the market emerged several stopgap measures. These feature a more elaborate navigation and tend to be marketed as ‘interactive PDFs’, or they are based on HTML images of the printed annual report pages, sometimes with pages that ‘turn over for you’ when prompted. How wonderful is that? The old PDF restrictions however still prevail. Beware also that they can be hosted on the supplier’s server which means that when you decide to move supplier, bang goes your report. In its defence, because the printed pages are ‘captured’, the only additional checking by the client is to ensure that the navigation is linking to the correct pages.

In a side-by-side contest HTML wins every time.

So what stimulated this interest in online reporting?
Despite the fact that Heywood Innovation has created HTML reports since 2000 for Top 200 Australian companies, it wasn’t until mid-2007 that The Simpler Regulatory System Bill was finally introduced that stimulated the present interest in online annual reporting. It stipulated that online is the default method for listed companies to provide annual report information to shareholders. Shareholders can however request a hard copy if they so desire.

Although public sector reports still require full printed documents, it is only a matter of time before a mandatory shift to online reporting comes into force.

So what is the level of uptake?
The Australian Shareholders Association calculated in mid-2008 that 90% of shareholders have now made the move online.

From our own experiences in 2008, the number of Australian companies producing HTML annual reports will not equal that of the UK, where 46% of listed companies have produced an HTML report since the Companies Act 2006 came into effect in January 2007 and switched the default towards electronic rather than print-based reporting. Yes, they had a headstart on us. It appears that Australian companies are being a little slow on the uptake and are persevering with PDF-based formats. They are reluctant to change from traditional reporting practices. The move to XBRL will be a real test.

In a 2007 ASA survey it was reported that 40% of Australian shareholders didn’t want an annual report in any shape or form.

A big opportunity with HTML is that audio and video files can be incorporated. For the same reasons that people do not watch static images on television, no longer do shareholders have to endure static photographs of the Chairman and CEO complete with frozen smiles.

Building a case for moving to HTML online reporting
So you’re ready to make the move to HTML. What do you need to consider and what information do you need in order to present a case for moving beyond PDF?
> HTML is the most effective means of displaying annual reporting information online
> reports are fast to download and feature easy and intuitive navigation
> requires no zooming in and out as text is at a readable size on screen
> editorial text can be in bite size chunks thereby eliminating the need to scroll
> reports can be obtained which indicate visitor hits on every page – useful for determining what information interests shareholders, and planning future content
> all photos and images can have descriptive ‘tags’ applied to them that explain their purpose and content
> audio and video files can be incorporated that provide an interactive and engaging experience

Why are 10-20% of Australian shareholders still requesting a hard copy report?
Since the 2007 Legislation change, many companies have found it difficult to make the right decision for their online reporting needs because a printed report is still requested by some shareholders. Let’s analyse why the requests keep coming in.

> shareholders are not fully aware of the Legislation change and its implications
> they didn’t understand the poorly designed share registry communication with the option to ‘tick the box’
> they don’t trust the company’s intentions
> they don’t like the PDF annual reports they’ve seen in the past and probably aren’t aware of user-friendly HTML ones
> they don’t have a PC and internet connection
> they’re too old for ‘all this internet stuff’
> they love the smell of ink on paper and its tactile qualities
> it provides tangible evidence of the investment they’ve made

Most shareholders aren’t happy with viewing large PDF documents on screen such as annual reports. They will be reluctant to move online until they experience a simple and easy to navigate HTML report and realise that the old challenges and frustrations are no longer there, and that it is now as easy as navigating any website.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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