New Delhi, Dec 03: Business reporting language software (XRBL) will lead technology trends over the next two years to help enterprises achieve accountability and transparency in financial reporting, according to the technology forecast of Price Waterhouse Coopers(PWC). Business intelligence and integration, and supply chain management would be the other key trends during the period.

Corporate transparency continues to be at the forefront of discussions in the business world and provides an incentive for businesses to make use of these capabilities, PWC's technology forecast 2003-05 stated.

XBRL - which is an electronic format for simplifying the flow of financial statements, performance reports, accounting records and other financial information between software programs - is one of the key emerging technologies, poised to significantly change business reporting in the coming years. In the next three years, XBRL will move from the early adopter phase to generally accepted way to report business information making corporates simplifying the process of issuing business reports, Ambarish Dasgupta, ED, PWC said adding it would streamline companies' method of preparing and desseminating financial data.

XBRL will allow financial information to be automatically communicated between different applications, the report said.

Other key technologies like business intelligence, business integration, supply chain management capabilities and expanded use of XML which provides basis for web services tops the list of PWC's technology forecast. Bureau Report