Dear Fellow Supporters of Integrated Reporting,
ExxonMobil’s 2016 Mock Integrated Report
There are three concerns companies typically raise when introduced to the idea of integrated reporting: complexity, cost, and litigation risk. As one way of addressing this issue, my integrated reporting books co-author, Mike Krzus, and I decided to run a little experiment. We—really Mike—managed to put together a decent integrated report for ExxonMobil for 2016 based on data taken directly from company documents in the public domain.
Challenging the complexity and cost concerns, it took Mike about 40 hours to do so. And since all the data in the report are already in the public domain, the litigation risk is no greater than what already exists, which I would argue is very low. You can read about our experiment in “Constructing ExxonMobil’s First Integrated Report: An Experiment” which includes the mock integrated report as an appendix. I have written up this experiment in “In Praise of ExxonMobil’s Reporting Transparency” for my column on Forbes.com. Please feel free to share these articles with people you think might be interested in them, such as employees of and investors in the company.
Mike and I are now exploring how to use natural language processing and artificial intelligence technologies to create an “Integrated Report Generator Tool (IRGT).” The IRGT would generate integrated reports for any listed company, starting with those whose reports are in English. We want to make this tool freely available to everyone. We see it as an interim, albeit imperfect, bridge to all companies issuing integrated reports themselves.
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Kind regards,
Bob
