By Dominic Jones | Published: October 17, 2007 | 
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When you know, and do nothing…
Update: This post has generated some email action. Some people think I’m targeting the wrong people. They say I shouldn’t blame vendors for not being prepared to stop producing bad products. I should blame companies that won’t spend the money to do the right thing. And one person thinks the post reeks of self-importance and that I’ve “got to be kidding” to draw analogies between vendors turning a blind eye and historical tragedies. He probably has a point about the historical references, and I don’t think I’m important. I think the underlying issue is important. Bad online documents are a barrier to communication between companies and their shareholders. I can’t fathom why anyone would want to knowingly contribute to that. What do you think?
By Dominic Jones
HISTORY is full of the tragedies of people who knew something was wrong but did nothing to stop it. People who in their hearts understood that something was not right but turned the other way.
It is tragic because often people want to take action, but they lack courage. I’ve been in situations where I have been too afraid to speak out or “do something” about a problem. I felt weak and small and depressed afterwards.
Where am I going with this? Well, back in August we invited web design firms and vendors who produce online annual reports to submit their work to us for review. If their products met our standards, we’d publicly recognize their work, as we are doing right now if you look to the left of your screen.
In all, we got 23 submissions and only ended up recognizing 7 firms. Those whose work we did not approve were not able to show examples that met our basic requirements. In many cases, these firms were not aware that they were not meeting the requirements. In other cases, companies could not show examples, but promised they would follow best practices. We believe them, but to be fair to the companies we did recognize, we can’t recognize them until they do. Finally, there was a small group of firms that could meet our requirements, but were not willing to stop producing non-compliant reports for companies that wanted them.
But the most striking thing about the process was who did not submit an entry. Not one of the big vendors who currently dominate the online annual report business bothered to submit an entry, even though we undertook that we would not disclose whose entries were turned down.
Why didn’t Broadridge, Thomson Financial, Shareholder.com, IR Solutions, PrecisionIR or one of the other big vendors submit an entry? Why were they not prepared to commit that they would never again produce image-based reports and PDF blobs that don’t meet SEC standards?
Because they know. They know that the products companies are buying from them do not meet any objective standards of usability.
They know, and do nothing. I have one piece of advice for them: just do the right thing.
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October 25th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Having worked for one of the larger providers who produce the image-based type of annual report conversion I have a slightly different view on this to most.
The products that these companies produce are born out of consumer demand. Quite simply, if clients did not buy them they would not exist.
When I personally sold one of these reports (and I sold many over the last few years) I made the end client fully aware of the usability/accessibility issues and I always promoted the full HTML, accessible conversions over and above an image-based conversion. After all, as a salesman it was in my interests to secure the largest deal possible.
However, most clients would fully accept the failings of an image-based conversion and still plough ahead, figuring that it was better than a plain PDF - and they are, offering downloads of figures into Excel and feedback functionality amongst other features.
So, Dominic, perhaps the time would be better spent educating the consumers as to the benefits of complete HTML conversions and not blaming the vendors for providing something which is in demand. Should a vendor to turn around and say “No, we will not produce any more image-based conversions” they will simply be handing over the business to the next vendor who will.
You have to take simple economic sense into consideration.
Regards,
Peter
October 25th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Hi Peter,
Good points, but I think you mean “client demand” not “consumer demand.”
I’d just say this: There are highly successful online annual report producers who have never sold an image-based or Flash paper report.
They just don’t do garbage work and they’ve explained that to their clients.
October 29th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I know what you mean Dominic - I now work for one of the more premium providers and we would never consider selling inaccessible solutions… we never have and we never will.
I guess my point is that you cannot expect any of the big vendors to promise never to sell another image-based report conversion while the market for them still exists. It’s simply not going to happen.
While people like you and me are aware of the implications of producing something that is sub-standard, many clients/consumers simply aren’t, or if they are they don’t have the budget approval to do anything about it. The ‘online’ reporting market is still maturing and while it does there will always be varying levels of service on offer.
Regards,
Peter