MANY companies will have thought about changing how they publish their annual reports online. Their objectives may be to communicate better by moving up to a more interactive report, or to save money by going down to a less elaborate report.

In either case, they are likely to have run into a product that seems like a reasonable solution, but which on closer consideration should be avoided at any cost.

We're talking about image-based annual reports, which you may know better by such monikers as "Dynamic," "Interactive," or "mobular" reports. These cost more than PDF reports, but a lot less than HTML reports -- typically anywhere from US$2,000 to US$7,000 depending on the vendor.

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