By Dominic Jones | Published: August 5, 2007 | 
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Looking for great online annual report designers
By Dominic Jones
WE ARE putting together a list of Web design and development firms that produce outstanding online annual reports. This list will be published on IRWebReport.com and be available free of charge to anyone looking for service providers.
To qualify to be on the list, your firm’s reports must meet the SEC’s new requirements for online annual reports and proxy statements. The SEC’s rules state that proxy materials must be “presented on the Web site in a format, or formats, convenient for both reading online and printing on paper.”
The operative term is “convenient.” We recommend you look up the term in a dictionary to understand what it means and apply those definitions to the Web.
There is no cost to submit your company’s name. We are looking for firms anywhere in the world. IRWebReport.com will publicly endorse your firm as producing great online annual reports.
How to submit your company’s entry
1. Provide your company’s name, address, phone numbers (including international dialing code), email and website URL.
2. Give us links to at least two online annual reports that you believe meet the SEC’s requirements. These can be for different companies, the same company for different years, or different companies for different years.
3. Promise us that your firm will never, starting from the time of your submission to us, sell reports that do not meet the SEC’s requirements, e.g. image-based, Flash paper, and PDF-only reports.
4. Send the above in an email to service@irwebreport.com by August 27, 2007. (whenever you’re ready)
5. You will know we have received your email when you get a confirmation from us. If you don’t get a confirmation within 12 hours, resend your message until you get the confirmation.
Selection process
We will review the example reports you submit. If you know what you’re doing, you already know what we are looking for. The examples don’t have to be fancy, just “convenient for both reading online and printing on paper.” If your reports make the grade, and your email to us provides everything we’ve asked for, you’re on the list. Make sure your email submission includes everything we’ve asked for. We’re doing this for your benefit, so don’t make it hard for us.
Yes, we will check reports for acceptable levels of accessibility to users with disabilities. However, your reports do not have to pass WCAG standards for your firm to qualify to be included in the published list of qualified designers.
But we will identify those firms whose example reports do meet most accessibility standards. You know, so our corporate readers in the UK and Oz know who to go to if they don’t want to get sued, named-and-shamed, or some other nasty thing.
We will only publish the names and details of firms whose reports unequivocally meet the SEC’s standards. We will not disclose which companies did not make the list or why. So if you’re not sure your reports will make the list, there’s nothing to lose by submitting your entry.
The list of qualified online annual report designers will be published on September 12, 2007.
We don’t care how big or small your firm is. We don’t care if we like you or not. All that matters is that you can do the job well.
Why are we doing this?
We want to help connect good online annual report designers with companies that are looking for help, and vice versa.
By publishing a list of qualified online annual report designers, we hope to help companies find the right help so that they deliver online reports and proxy statements in 2008 which meet the varied needs of their investors, as required by the SEC’s rules.
We also want to recognize those many hard-working designers who have been producing great online annual reports in very difficult circumstances. Your time has come…
Final notes
We are looking for firms that design and produce good online annual reports for other companies. This isn’t an annual report competition.
Don’t expect that because we’ve written about your firm’s work before, or corresponded with you in the past, that your company will make the list. You have to send us your information even if we know about you.
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August 7th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Dominic,
While I fully support your initiative for ‘convenient’, well-structured online annual reports, there is one issue that needs clarification…mainly around the following requirement:
“3. Promise us that your firm will never, starting from the time of your submission to us, sell reports that do not meet the SEC’s requirements, e.g. image-based, Flash paper, and PDF-only reports.”
- We, like many other consultants, advise clients of best practice and the danger of not having accessible content or failing to develop content designed for the web…many think carefully on the back of such advice and tailor their communications accordingly.
But, as I’m sure you’re aware, some clients simply don’t want to know even once they’ve been advised. They will rule out user-friendly online reports for various reasons and opt for, say, an image-based report or simply a PDF. Some do it for cost reasons; some because they don’t yet see the real value of the web. Many are probably a mix of the two. I believe that is the right of the client to make that choice - it is, after all, their communications programme.
- Does that mean though that consultants would be excluded from your list of ‘great online annual report’ suppliers because they might then go on to provide what the client wants despite having advised those clients that, say, a PDF-only route might not be accessible or that image-based reports are not that user-friendly?
August 7th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Hi Richard,
“Does that mean though that consultants would be excluded from your list of ‘great online annual report’ suppliers because they might then go on to provide what the client wants despite having advised those clients that, say, a PDF-only route might not be accessible or that image-based reports are not that user-friendly?”
Yes, they will be excluded. We will not recognize any firm that participates in helping a client breach SEC requirements, even if that client is not subject to SEC requirements.
The requirements are there to ensure easy access and use, accommodation of investors’ needs, and to afford investors the advantage of the inherent interactivity of the Web.
That is the dictionary definition of “convenient.” A tough standard, for sure, but the right one.
In essence, we are asking online annual report producers to stand up and do the right thing. I know it’s hard, and I know this will shorten the list substantially, but there are annual report producers who currently meet this standard. They just don’t do bad reports, even when the client insists.
They deserve recognition.
As for companies and vendors that currently are not meeting the SEC’s standards, and that’s most of them, they are going to have a tough time explaining why they ignored available research, international standards, and SEC guidance when this issue gets brought up in court.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:34 am
We have the same challenges as Richard mentions above, where we have legacy clients who are very attached to their “quickreports” for reasons of cost and convenience.
However we are engaging all these clients in discussions to move them to proper W3C compliant HTML reporting - this is in their best interests.
So yes, as so often, you are being dogmatic, a pain in the rear - and right.
NASDAQ certainly need some counseling on best practice - what are they thinking by offering virtually free “dynamic documents” ?!?
This is simply going to create a legacy of bad online reports, that could have significant negative impact on the view investors take on online reporting to shareholders, with associated collateral damage to the SEC Notice and Access initiative.
August 8th, 2007 at 10:33 am
“NASDAQ certainly need some counseling on best practice - what are they thinking by offering virtually free “dyanamic documents” ?!?”
Wait. There’s trouble brewing on that front…
As for the past. That’s done. We’re just looking for companies that can and will do the right thing.
Clearly, there’s some education that needs to be done. I think we can do our part by drawing attention to the problems.
I’ve already noticed some reaction to a couple of the items we’ve published recently, particularly the one on AMERCO. Mellon’s clients are now offering access to HTML alongside the image-based document, which is a backward way of doing it, but at least they’re responding. Now we just need a little navigation for the HTML options. LOL! Hell, it’s like pulling teeth.
Broadridge, however, is oblivious. But not for long…
August 10th, 2007 at 7:21 am
blame can be often be attached to the company’s traditional ATL agency, who may have a whiz-bang-flash approach to anything web. They give the report to some designers who don’t work in this field.
Online reporting is a niche thing: its not B2C, not even B2B. Its become more PR than PR ever was.
August 20th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Thanks Dominic, this is a great idea!
My experience with companies asking for image based reports is, that they simple don’t know what HTML can do… Asking an agency to provide a PDF seems to me paradoxical: anyone can produce and load up a PDF to the web?
August 24th, 2007 at 8:24 am
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September 12th, 2007 at 10:41 am
[...] to design great online annual reports — for companies and their investors. In August 2007, we invited online annual report producers anywhere in the world to submit their work to us to review. As part [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 2:09 am
I’ve put a few annual reports and other sorts of business reports online, usually for smaller companies. Usually I’m given a bloated PDF from someone who doesn’t know how to make a PDF for web use - a printer or designer for print. It isn’t Tagged so I can’t make it Tagged from what I’ve been given.
If I can get a source document that I have the source program for (seldom), the document is usually is NOT constructed logically so that Adobe Acrobat would not be able to Tag it coherently anyway.
In my experience, a company’s stressed-out management usually signs off on Annual Reports at the last minute, never allowing anyone - not even print people, let alone the forgotten website designers - any time to do anything properly.
Although for annual report users I would want to prepare full HTML if I had my way and although I lobby hard for more useable versions, the best I’ve been able to manage for my clients is an optimized and well bookmarked PDF document. And my clients do not get complaints from their audience - at least none that I’ve been able to wheedle out of them.
October 15th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Hi Dominic
Our new set of reports - as listed on our very new international site http://investoreportsusa.squarespace.com - I think would largely comply with your requirements and in some respects, particularly in terms of usability, perhaps go a step further.
These reports are/will be W3C compliant, although in some cases on the latest reports, due to timing, the precise compliance may follow a little later than the live date!
You will see that we are not offering the “quickreport” product at all internationally.
Locally we are persuading all our clients still on this platform to move up to proper HTML, and are not marketing the bottom end product any longer.
We no doubt could still generate considerable revenue out of this product, both locally and internationally, but agree with you that its time is past; it would not be in our client’s best interests to present their reports in this format any longer.
Regards
Simon
October 17th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
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