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 Challenges
Why Choose the Microsoft Office System?
Microsoft Office System Products
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ChallengesThere are a number of technical challenges associated with streamlining financial reporting and analysis: | • | Disparate systems in different geographic regions or company divisions mean similar data is formatted differently. | | • | Regional or international discrepancies exist in financial reporting standards. | | • | User education is required for any new solution that does not use existing tools. | | • | Financial information is sensitive, monitoring security is an important issue. | | • | Historical reports are stored on client computers and the data is not easily integrated into automated processes. |
Why Choose the Microsoft Office System?To address the challenges in streamlining financial reporting and analysis processes for your business, adopting a standard language—such as XBRL—that has worldwide recognition can have tremendous benefits. These benefits can include significantly lowering the amount of data re-entry and manual validation that must be done. This improves report and analysis production speed and makes these documents more reliable. The Microsoft Office System is an ideal platform choice for an XBRL solution because it provides the following benefits: | • | Interoperates with other systems using XML (XBRL is based on XML) and Web services | | • | Impacts your business rapidly | | • | Uses existing tools that are in place and well-understood | | • | Leverages highly flexible technology that can increase the productivity of analysis and report creators | | • | Deploys quickly with minimal IT staff due to the familiarity of Microsoft products | | • | Lowers total cost of ownership as a result of using existing investments in Microsoft products | | • | | | • | Offers a rich network of partners well-versed with Microsoft Office technologies |
Microsoft Office System ProductsThe Microsoft Office System is an integrated set of products, technologies, services, and solutions that enable customers to increase their organizational, team, and personal productivity. Multiple Microsoft Office System technologies will help you realize these business benefits. Financial reporting and analysis solutions that use XBRL commonly involve Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and Microsoft Office Word 2003. Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Microsoft Office Word 2003
Learn MoreRead the Technical Discussion Guide and learn how the Microsoft Office System can serve as a platform to quickly create an XBRL solution to improve financial reporting and analysis processes. | 
