Rating: 
Summary: A Call to Arms
Review: "ValueReporting" smoothly describes many broken financial reporting processes, including "whispering", a time-consuming process that CFOs play with analysts, where CFOs "whisper" their earnings expectations to the analyst, making the analysts appear intelligent. A great deal for the analyst cause they don't have to do any real analysis. If the CFO does not play this game, they risk the wrath of Wall Street. The problem with this is that it is in violation of the spirit (if not the law) of the yet to be enforced SEC Fair Disclosure Act which states that Sally Q. Public gets to know material information the same time that John Q. Analyst does. "ValueReporting" does offer a practical solution through XBRL technology. As a member of XBRL.org I strongly agree with the authors that if business reporting, both financial and non-financial, is standardized, Web technologies are in place to distribute this information uniformly to all investors and in a richer format than at present. With the gentle prodding of regulatory agencies like the SEC and FDIC, this will happen sooner rather than later. Let's hope that SEC Chairman Unger reads this book, and fast. For me as a consultant and a technologist "who can spell XBRL", The ValueReporting Revolution was a call to arms to apply my knowledge to the inequities of financial reporting. Helping clients sell their wares over the Web is nice, but to level the financial playing field for small companies as well as large, for the small investor as well as the institutional, is ennobling. And forcing Wall Street analysts to actually work for a living, would be, well, just icing on the cake.
Rating:
Summary: A Call to Arms
Review: "ValueReporting" smoothly describes many broken financial reporting processes, including "whispering", a time-consuming process that CFOs play with analysts, where CFOs "whisper" their earnings expectations to the analyst, making the analysts appear intelligent. A great deal for the analyst cause they don't have to do any real analysis. If the CFO does not play this game, they risk the wrath of Wall Street. The problem with this is that it is in violation of the spirit (if not the law) of the yet to be enforced SEC Fair Disclosure Act which states that Sally Q. Public gets to know material information the same time that John Q. Analyst does. "ValueReporting" does offer a practical solution through XBRL technology. As a member of XBRL.org I strongly agree with the authors that if business reporting, both financial and non-financial, is standardized, Web technologies are in place to distribute this information uniformly to all investors and in a richer format than at present. With the gentle prodding of regulatory agencies like the SEC and FDIC, this will happen sooner rather than later. Let's hope that SEC Chairman Unger reads this book, and fast. For me as a consultant and a technologist "who can spell XBRL", The ValueReporting Revolution was a call to arms to apply my knowledge to the inequities of financial reporting. Helping clients sell their wares over the Web is nice, but to level the financial playing field for small companies as well as large, for the small investor as well as the institutional, is ennobling. And forcing Wall Street analysts to actually work for a living, would be, well, just icing on the cake.
Rating:
Summary: No quick fix
Review: A book that tells it as it is - No quick fix. Practically the authors give directions and landmarks and encourage by defining the rewards at journey's end. Any organisations involved in high-technology product development are aware of the value gap and the pressing need to define it. This book gives a lot of help to organisations and individuals in their journey and for a `heavy topic' is a surprisingly good read. Peter Brown - Quality Capital Exchange plc
Rating:
Summary: Pass Go & collect $200 for this short cut to the future
Review: First I should explain that I'm not a neutral reviewer: I have known one of the authors of this book (Bob Eccles) ever since he woke some of us up with his HBR article "The Performance Measurement Manifesto" almost ten years ago, and I've also met another of the authors (David Phillips) in the last year. Coupled with that, some of the work of my company (Metapraxis) on Business Driver Diagrams is mentioned in Chapter 1. I mention these points up-front in the interests of transparency, which is a core theme of the book itself. The book's thesis is that the investors of the future will reward companies for such transparency - in other words, those companies that understand, measure and publish information about leading indicators such as growth of market share as well as lagging indicators such as profit will be better rated than their competitors, other things being equal. This is pretty controversial stuff. After all, if you're the CEO or CFO of a major global multinational that's just announced on-target quarterly earnings, but your (currently confidential) internal leading edge indicators say that your market share is starting to fall, how exactly are your investors going to react if you decide to be brave enough to tell them all about it? There is clearly something of a problem here and I refer to it as the Paradox of the World's Bravest Customer. You don't know who that was? I think it was the guy who bought the world's first fax machine. Think about it. So undoubtedly there'll be some short-term pain for the pioneers, but once the markets start to see that a core group of innovative firms has the courage to disclose this kind of information (whether good or bad) then it's obvious that this disclosure will reduce the risks involved in these investments. And as John Maynard Keynes pointed out in 1910: "What would be a risky investment for an ignorant speculator may be exceptionally safe for the well-informed expert. The amount of risk to any investor practically depends, in fact, upon the degree of his ignorance respecting the circumstances and prospects of the investment he is considering." * The book is all about the revolutionary implications that follow through from this 90-year old observation. Whether you agree with the thesis or not, it will change the way you think about corporate information, business management and investor relations. I recommend it highly to CEOs, CFOs, IR heads, financial analysts and auditors, business school students and indeed to anyone embarking on a career in these areas. Robert Bittlestone: Managing Director, Metapraxis - London & New York * JM Keynes: Hopes Betrayed 1883-1920 by Robert Skidelsky (Vol 1); Ch. 9 Economic Orthodoxies. Skidelsky is quoting in turn from the "Collected Writings of JMK": xv 46-47....
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic ! A must read ! Breakthrough thinking !
Review: I have purchased several books on amazon.com, but I must say that this is one of the best ones I have read so far ! This is exactly the sort of book management in companies worldwide should be reading ! I live and work in Tokyo, and I think the Japanese public companies here could learn so much from this book ! Corporate reporting here is very poor, especially in the banking sector(horrendous !), and investors do not take them seriously anymore. Public companies here should improve their corporate reporting and utilize the capital markets more, and the first thing they need to do is to regain the trust of their
shareholders. In other words, they should read this book cover to cover right away ! The people who worked on this book, like Mr. Matthew Wissell, who leads the Value Reporting practice in PricewaterhouseCoopers' New York office, should be highly commended for such a fine piece of work !
Rating: 
Summary: Good "second book" on accounting reform
Review: If you want to learn about accounting scams, you probably need Mulford and Comiskey, The Financial Numbers Game. But for a broader view of the virtues and limits of accounting, Eccles and company have a lot to offer. You can skip or skim the somewhat overhyped stuff about the "ValueRevolution" itself (note that three of the authors come from PricewaterhouseCoopers, where they seem to be having some trouble with their space bar, or spacebar). Keep your best brain cells for chapters three through eight, where you get a look at the earnings obsession -- and just as useful, a suggestion of what investors really need and want. Note that one of the co-authors (Robert H. Herz) is the new head of the Financial Accounting Standards Board).
Rating:
Summary: Good "second book" on accounting reform
Review: If you want to learn about accounting scams, you probably need Mulford and Comiskey, The Financial Numbers Game. But for a broader view of the virtues and limits of accounting, Eccles and company have a lot to offer. You can skip or skim the somewhat overhyped stuff about the "ValueRevolution" itself (note that three of the authors come from PricewaterhouseCoopers, where they seem to be having some trouble with their space bar, or spacebar). Keep your best brain cells for chapters three through eight, where you get a look at the earnings obsession -- and just as useful, a suggestion of what investors really need and want. Note that one of the co-authors (Robert H. Herz) is the new head of the Financial Accounting Standards Board).
Rating:
Summary: a great read in an unlikely area
Review: It is clear to everyone who thinks about the topic that traditional financial reports are a completely inadequate measure of overall corporate performance. But, like the weather, everyone talks about the issue and no-one does anything about it. Eccles et al have -- they have put forward concrete suggestions for making progress on this difficult issue. Congratulations also for the lucid and interesting prose style. This book belongs on every executive's book shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Show performance numbers and let the Market decide worth
Review: The PricewaterhouseCoopers Valuereporting initiative is attempting to move business reporting beyond the basic statement of earnings and is trying to add the intangible assests of value to the bottom line. The authors here give a great discourse on the initiative and its goals, with good humor and very open discussion, detail how things are currently done (and the dangers inherant for individual investors), why things need to be shaken up (else why a revolution), and the plan for doing so. Very rarely do you find a book on accounting that is a pleasure to read, but this is one of those books
Rating:
Summary: An XML Software Guy Reviews "The Value Reporting Revolution"
Review: The Value Reporting Revolution offers a much needed attack on the status quo of financial reporting and, even more importantly, suggests some remedies. Weaving cases and data from original research, academic papers, and the business press, Eccles et al. have written an accessible guide with minimal accounting jargon and even touches of humor. After thorough analysis of the shortcomings of today's "earnings game," the authors map out a comprehensive approach to determining and sharing key financial and nonfinancial data that will help all business stakeholders assess a company's value. By using internal performance measurement tools such as the Balanced Scorecard for external reporting, companies can focus more clearly on creating value rather than face a quarterly scramble to burnish their earnings picture. Nonfinancial disclosure would also improve decision making for investors by providing a more complete picture of company operations and strategy. In addition to promoting a commitment to improved ongoing communications, the authors note that the Internet and recent financial disclosure regulation have enabled new entrants to develop and distribute a range of economic information and services that compete directly with traditional Big-5 and Wall Street firms. This could signify the end of the "double-secret, uber-whisper" the earnings rumors that reach (and reward) only a subset of a subset of people in the know. As an organizational consultant, this book was very helpful in clarifying the network of relationships among companies, analysts, regulators, accountants, and investors - and showing how they misestimate value and often move markets based on limited, asymmetric information. ValueReporting suggests an alternative way for companies to account for themselves that is aligned with sound management and sound investing.
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