Cases in Japan
Introduction of XBRL/XML technology in restructuring internal core system
Fujitsu developed XML Account Book system named XML Daifuku-cho, in order to integrate and record various data deriving from business activities, in the process of restructuring internal core system such as receiving and executing orders system and accounting system.
The project of restructuring link systems interface involved Fujitsu’s main receiving and executing system in COBOL, which had covered almost all orders of Fujitsu (with 6 million steps) and the related 69 systems concerning producing activities, procuring activities, contract management, and overseas business, and 1,279 link systems in total. To solve these complicated problems, XBRL and XML technologies were used as a core to reach a breakthrough.
From management positions of the company, internal information is hard to utilize easily because each department keeps its information in their own system like a silo. Also, items of data are not unified among different departments, and are not easy for searching. In order to solve this problem, XBRL was introduced as a standard template format to share the items of data deriving from the corporate activities. At the same time, XML accounting book was developed in the project, to record trading slip level facts into the database as additional information.
Fujitsu is going to feed back the results of this project to the customers, and deal with their management problems such as internal controls and application to international accounting standards.
Figure Structure of XML accounting book
