Linked in

I’ve been having chats with various people over the past month about how to improve their online reporting. Many companies recognise that the new ‘default’ to electronic shareholder communications isn’t just about cost-savings for the company. It also comes with the ‘price’ of having to make your online IR a little bit more communicative.

Of course, some companies have been seizing this opportunity for a number of years. Others are finding it hard to play catch-up now that they want to play the online default card.

One of the issues that is causing scratching of heads is the idea that the online version of an annual report has to be the same as the printed version. Makes sense – certainly, people who request the printed copy shouldn’t be disadvantaged by that decision.

But…and it’s one of those big BUTS again…the web is ideally suited to linking off to other information. If you’re talking about corporate responsibility in your report, doesn’t it make sense to link to your corporate responsibility section in a related links field? Of course it does.

Trouble is, this is also linked to that need/desire to ringfence the audited information in an annual report away from the rest of the IR/corporate site. Company secretaries, lawyers and other disciplines are keen that this audited ‘snapshot’ of the company at a certain point in time doesn’t get confused with other information on the site. (That’s just one reason why online annuals often have their own microsite.)

So what’s the solution? Well, for starters, there is inevitably going to be a few years of transition here as less online-savvy people get to grips with the new environment. But in my mind there’s little difference between referring to a link to further information in a printed annual report and actually providing that link to the information in the online environment.

Just give it a few years. It might mean that some companies take the click-through ‘disclaimer’ route along the way but my guess would be that those die out over a period of time. Just as they have in other areas. It’s a new reporting environment for many companies. And it will take a bit of time for them to adjust.