Nexxar.com company blog

Online Interim Reporting still underdeveloped

nospam@example.com (Friedrich Einzinger) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:54:25 +0100

Following our benchmark-analysis, where we, among other indices, explored the conversion of online annual reports of DAX 80 companies, we looked at the situation in interim reporting.

The findings are simply disappointing. Whereas 56 % of all DAX 80 companies present their annual report as a full HTML-solution, the percentage shrinks to 24 % in interim reporting. Only 19 out of 80 companies make use of the potential of the internet in interim reporting issues. The stake of (user-unfriendly) JPG-shows (11 %) is lower than in annual reporting (26 %) either. This means that 65 % of all interim reports are provided as PDF, what adds absolutely no value to the report.

Since starting our benchmark survey in 2003 we have been noticing a clear trend towards high-quality HTML reports. Search functions and links to related content are just two of the many advantages HTML provides in comparison to PDF. We will have a closer look at the development of HTML interim reporting in the future.

Stay tuned.

Continue reading "Online Interim Reporting still underdeveloped"

Corporates struggling for a communication strategy in Social Media

nospam@example.com (Thomas Rosenmayr) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:45:55 +0100

Social media is the hottest trend on the internet right now. More and more people get connected via social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and share things via YouTube, Delicious or SlideShare. Facebook with currently more than 200 million user is the website with the most visits per month in December 2009 (2,8 billion) leaving former unrivaled champions like Google and Yahoo! behind.

Million visits per month (Source http://siteanalytics.compete.com)

How does Corporate Communication react?
As the social media trend emerged, coporates started positioning themselves to seek communicational benefits. Imminent and easy to unvail are positive effects for the corporate image. Social media is young and trendy to be part of it refreshes your brand and thus offers marketing value. More difficult to find are direct effects on business. Dell tells us that they make millions selling on Twitter. But Facebook or Twitter themself still lack answers on how they plan to turn their leading role within Social Media into tangible assets! Some say webculture have been soured by the "everything for free" attitude. Google successfully captured the advertising market to pay their bill but will this cake be big enough to also feed Social Media on the long-run.

The answer for this will be given by corporate communication strategies. Currently there is a shift of marketing budgets towards web. But what is the true value of a banner displayed 100 million times on Facebook? To me a banner looks like an old advertising strategy brought online. It is a relict of broadcasting brought to the Web 2.0 environment. As a principle, I never click on ads, how about you?

To benefit from a trend you need to understand the way it works first.
Social Media to me is about conversation and engagement. People want to share authentic feelings, thoughts and information. If corporates want to be part of this they need to comply with it. Currently lots of companies use Facebook and Twitter as push communciation channel pretty much like press releases. They just follow where their users are. But they still use the same communication attitude and don't get into any conversation. Web 2.0 offers a multi-way communication. Corporates not answering user questions are just missing the point! On the long run I think the damage to the brand outridges benefits from the simple present on Web 2.0.

What does this mean for corporate communication strategy?
Corporates should be very careful before engaging themselves within Social Media. They should look into a long-term communciation strategy first. Decide which plattform should be used for what reason and plan appropriate ressources to engage into true conversations. In nowadays global village only true committed companies will benefit from spreading their message word-to-mouth, worldwide!

Summing-up I would advise two steps to be considered:
First get acquainted with the new patterns by listening to your audience. Listening is always the best if you like to learn. Take your time and evaluate all your options. Its ok if you decide not to use Social Media!

Only if you see value for your company, take the second step and engage yourself into a true conversation.

DAX Companies And Web-Optimized PDFs

nospam@example.com (Marco Schueller) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:35:34 +0100

Use of the mobile internet is growing faster on a daily basis. More and more users access the internet from their mobile devices – think of smartphones, netbooks, iPhones and in the near future: iPads.

In the mobile world, bandwidth is still an issue (unlike in the world of desktop-internet). It's even more important therefore to keep down the filesize of PDFs that you want users to download from your website. It's not too complicated to reduce file sizes without any quality loss e.g in images. You just have to do it.

Here's an overview of the Annual Report PDFs file sizes that the German DAX-30 Companies offer for download on their Investor Relations or Annual Report Websites. Decide for yourself, if you think this is user-friendly or not ...

Medium file size: 4.8 MB

Largest file sizes:

Salzgitter: 11.6 MB
BMW: 10.4 MB
ThyssenKrupp: 10.0 MB

Smallest file sizes:

Allianz: 1.9 MB
E.on: 1.3 MB
Münchener Rück (Munich Re): 0.8 MB

Same procedure as every year!

nospam@example.com (Marco Schueller) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:03:12 +0100

Well, here we are then. 2010! Holidays are gone, New Year's Eve celebrations lie behind us and we are officially back in the routine. Not much of a surprise thus, that the New Year feels very much like the Old Year already.

Very little has changed – a quick glance at my desk reveals that. Looks like it did on December 30. Same documents, same letters, same e-mails. No magic has been performed to clean it, no laborious elves have completed my projects while I've been away partying. It's all left there for me to tackle. And I will! We will. Like last year.

And that's good news for you! Have a look at your to-do list. See that item 'online annual report'? (You might think there's an App for that, but no ...) Cross it off! I'll take care of it. We will. Like last year.

Rest assured that Nexxar will deliver. On time. Like last year.

Some things never change ...

Happy New Year!

Nexxar all year round!

nospam@example.com (Gisela Fischer) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:50:57 +0100

Christmas is always a good time to look back at the closing year and share some thoughts about the future. With this video we want to give you some insights in what we have been doing to stay ahead of the crowd in online corporate reporting. How we secure our fast and safe approach to hugh amount of data and what is next in our innovation pipeline. Watch our video message (English or German) by Thomas Rosenmayr, CEO of Nexxar.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2010!

Wir wünschen fröhliche Weichnachten und ein erfolgreiches Jahr 2010!

Continue reading "Nexxar all year round!"

Will Google Sidewiki change IRs online communication pattern?

nospam@example.com (Thomas Rosenmayr) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:45:30 +0100

In September Google released a new application called Sidewiki. It's a browser plug-in that allows users to comment on any website he wants to do. The comments are visible for all other sidewiki users giving it a hugh potential impact for all corporates taking care for their reputation. Like with lots of social media tools there is not much you can do to prevent people using it. Thus its definitiv something to watch out and get acquainted with before you get aspersed on your Corporate Website or online Annual Report.

At least you should claim your site(s) to show you are aware of this tool and keep an eye on its impact. Read more at http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/index.html

I would be very much interested how this quite powerful tool develops. If you have any experience with Sidewiki on your website, please share it with me! Most interesting seems to me:

What kind of comments do you get?
Do you get them at all?
Is there a privacy issue in your view?
Do you plan to use sidewiki yourself?
Is this something your analysts and investors are aware of, or using already?

Continue reading "Will Google Sidewiki change IRs online communication pattern?"

Turn, zoom, flash! French big caps going their own online reporting way?

nospam@example.com (Johannes Wewalka) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:47:23 +0100

Today surveys in UK (SmithsRatings, The Group) and Germany (Kirchhoff (PDF)) underline the dominant role of HTML in online corporate reporting. Our yearly Nexxar Benchmark analysis shows this long-term trend since 2003 with now 40-60% of companies in British FTSE-100, German DAX-80, Dutch AEX-50 and US-american Dow-30 provide their annual report in a format that meets the basic usability needs of investors.

In almost all developed capital markets of the western hemisphere the conversion of annual reports into HTML is clearly rising, wiping out PDF and - even more dramatic - image-based reports (aka JPG show) that lots of articles and comments have stigmatised being not convenient for online use.

But not so in France! A surprisingly high amount of CAC-40 companies (17!) decide for an image-based conversion of their annual report. Only three companies provide a state-of-the-art HTML report and the remaining half (20) solely offers a PDF for download. Instead of turning to HTML like in other countries (see development of UK and Netherlands in our research since 2005) french companies increasingly 'enhance' their image-based reports with flash.

Apart from a few more in Spain and Italy those flashy reports can be found nowhere else in the world, making it mainly a french phenomenon. Considering that 20 out of 50 EuroStoxx companies are French one might assume they would look to their peers? Obviously french solution providers have a firm hold on IR and CC officers when it comes to corporate reporting.

What does this flash enhancement do with the report and what is good or bad about it?
As by nature a 1:1 picture of a printed report suffer basic problems of not fitting portrait format pages on to a landscape format screen. Side guide, page numbers etc. take best space on the top of each page and multi-column information further fuels the need for scrolling. Copy and paste of text for reuse in articles, blogs or research is not possible, font-size and font-family even make them hardly legible.

But the biggest downside is ignorance towards typical online navigation and orientation. Whereas webpages ususally offer a flat hierarchy into content via teasers, quick- and crosslinks - the JPG show gives you a turn to next page click button that leaves you alone estimating what information you need to scroll through on the next page. Togeher with slow loading due to file size implication of images, the user experience that stays is like using a plane to drive the streets!

The flash enhancement doesn't change any of the mentioned problems but it makes the report work more smooth. It enables zooming into pages or highlighting of search phrases. Both helpful, thus only necessary as the report is not done in proper HTML and not fitting on my screen.

To sum it up, the french way copes with major disadvantages of image-based reporting by trying to fix some of the symptoms instead of curing the disease.

Below I have put together some thoughts on french big cap flash reports. Click through yourself and share with me your personal user experience. I am looking forward to reading your comments on this blog!

BNPParibas -> somebody please tell me, why there is a go-to-page function in all these reports?
Dexia -> Find the zoom! and when you have, try the second zoom too. very intuitive!
Accor -> Search for "dividend" even highlighted. search for "dividen" (mistyp) -> no results.
Air France -> Does anyone really expect orientation from the thumbnail overview?
LVMH -> Recommending a page sends a PDF, switching language leads to the corporate homepage.
EDF -> very futuristic bookmark system -> sticky notes!
France Telecom -> Share a laugh by using the "reading simplified" function

Just bad in any direction -> L'Oreal, Veolia Environnement, Bouygues

Continue reading "Turn, zoom, flash! French big caps going their own online reporting way?"

The future of corporate publishing

nospam@example.com (Thomas Rosenmayr) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:45:43 +0100

Since the beginning of this reporting season we see a massive increase of interest for our capabilities to lead the corporate reporting process - both print and online. Being in this business for more than 10 years, this smells like the most massive mind shift in corporate reporting I have seen so far. Will this be a major trend unfolding, whats the reason for it and what is the impact for our business, were my immediate thoughts.

After some weeks passing with lots of talks and presentations I do have answers for the first two of my three questions:

Yes the trend for online taking the lead on coporate reporting seems to be major and unreversable
The obvious reason is cutting costs: Both in producing less or no print documents and a much leaner process management by reducing overhead. Some companies bring environmental aspects and some want to demonstrate that online is their preferred way of communication.

Valid arguments and a logic next step down the road of a growing-up internet. But those arguments are nothing new to me! Exactly the same arguments have been around ever since I concentrated on online reporting in 2002. Why is this shift happening just in the middle of one of the biggest econonmic crisis since decades? Probably the answer lies in the crisis itself: it fueled openness for change and the look into new ways of dealing.

Need for change maybe the initial impedus? The increasing capability of online corporate publishing systems plays a vital role, too. But above all I would name "the human education factor": people got used to New Media. Dealing with ignorance of executives still printing their E-Mails becomes considerably less. Its always humans taking decisions not organizations or machines. The changing attitude towards Web is to some extend simply driven by growing up with and getting used to it!

Now, what about the third question assuming this shift is major and unreversable: What will be the impact for online reporting business? What will the future workflow of an coporate report look like?

I guess its too early to give an answer yet. But I do have some thoughts to share:

Multi-user data warehouses managing the content generation process are by nature more effective if shared online.
When data is stored in an online tool, the HTML version is easy to generate from that source.
Vendors selling their workflow tool gain power over their clients: Users educated for a specific software tool have a strong bias against change.

The last assumption will lead to a decline of quality and at the same time to a free lunch profit for vendors that gained this strong position at their clients. I already observe this at some mediocre online annual reports, where I got as a reply: "You are right, but we currently not look into this as we generate HTML from our publishing system".

The end user doesn't care about the process. The quality of the online report will be solely judged by the output. Thus companies should look into standardazing gateways of these application to gain back independence of choice!

To sum up I think it is important to look into new ways of dealing data of corporate reports, as there is a need and value to cut down overhead redundancies! But we will look more into standardization to be able to cope with different workflow systems. Ceterum censio we will further focus on our strengths to keep up usability and value for the user!

Five steps to a good online annual report

nospam@example.com (Thomas Rosenmayr) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:12:36 +0200

Currently corporates start preparing their upcoming annual reports. This seems a good chance to involve them into this vivid discussion on what is necessary to consider when presenting the information of your Annual Report online.

Changes in company law in big countries like USA, UK or Germany direct attention on how companies present their annual reports and proxy statements on their websites. Everybody agrees that the corporate site is a major communication channel for disclosure of corporation information. But what is a convenient and appropriate way to address users? For me there are some basic rules to obey in order to get a good result.

1. Don't use JPG-Shows

e.g. United Technologies 2008

Some vendors keep on telling image-galleries add value for the online media. That’s rubbish! There are no usability benefits compared to a PDF. Both mirror the portrait format of the printed version and are therefore not suitable to view on landscape screens. But the content of a picture is no machine-readable code and hardly legible for humans. Thus from a user perspective they are worse than PDFs as they are not further processable. No interactivity, poor search results display and loading times end up in a poor user experience falling short of the high expectation caused by promoting the "Interactive Annual Report"! http://twitpic.com/kt4l8

2. Don't mix formats within your report

e.g. Reed Elsevier 2008

If you decide, as we would recommend, to convert your annual report into a fully-fledged HTML website you should not use any short cuts. Some companies integrate a big portion of the report notably the financial statements and notes just as PDF downloads. Such mixed reports are not usable if you are really interested in this information! A simple search query demonstrates that. Same applies for integration of tables as pictures. Refrain from those short cuts and your users will thank you!

3. Multimedia sometimes hinders information

e.g. Carrefour 2008

Flash and video are the mainstream we see today on the web. Moving images attract more attention, thus you may think this is good for your online report. In principle thats true, as long as you not derail the user from what he is looking for. And despite of what lots of webagencies think, the main purpose of visiting your online report is not to visualize, see and feel your annual report image show, but simply to find information one is searching for! So make sure flash is used sparingly and not for text information to keep your data fully searchable and processable.

4. Care about the user

e.g. Linde 2008

The main focus of the Internet is for (re)search! Search is the most important need, carried out at the internet with over 2 billion queries per day. Thus ensure a good link-up by search engines and offer a powerful search routine within your report. Your annual report search should at least rank the found hits by relevance and highlight the word looked for on the displayed pages.

Other tools worth considering to enhance usability and interactivity in your HTML report are:

Layer glossary to explain terms
Excel downloads of tables
Crosslinking of related information
Interactive ChartGenerator

Dominic Jones from IR Web Report describes these and other features in his blog post on our report for Merck KGaA last February.

5. Not too much, reduce to information!

This last step is as important as the others: Think about the user audience you want to reach and care about what they really would like to access at your online annual report. Bells and whistels tools, video and multimedia are selling high nowadays. Agencies like them to cash in on profit, reputation or the like. But are they really adding value for your specific user group? Thats up to your individual communication strategy and thats something you should start thinking about before you talk to an online annual report agency.

Why WAI is better in theory than practice

nospam@example.com (Nikolaus Rosenmayr) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:08:00 +0200

The theory: desire to improve accessability

Accessibility guidelines and standards like the WCAG are leading the web community in the right direction. But always keep in mind that the target audience are visually impaired people and not the standard addicts. Most people, like me and probably you, are not visually impaired, and therefore have never experienced or felt problems with non-accessable pages. So be careful when someone tells you about do’s and don'ts.

The best you can do is stick to the standards, but feel free to leave if this provides your target audience with a better overall result. There are many restrictions (e.g. old browser compatibility) that cannot be handled by these guidelines. Thus these are only "guidelines".

The practise: Implementing WAI/WCAG guidelines

1. Compatibility with old browsers

Sometimes you have to provide compatibility to an older browser like IE6, which is (unfotunately !) still used by many people. Our statistics reveal that about 40% of all hits in our online annual reports are created by IE6 users. It is said that many companies are reluctant to switch to modern browsers. If you are targeting your web pages to professional/corporate users, you have to stay compatible with IE6. Poor chap!

1.b Deprecated HTML - TD with width attribute

The width attribute of the TD tag is marked deprecated in the HTML 4.01 standard, but we have faced difficulties with IE6 if you omit this attribute and set the “width” with CSS only. (We usually don’t use tables for the layout but we create a lot of financial data tables). I have learned that all modern browsers still understand or simply ignore deprecated tags and attributes. Therefore it is IMHO OK to still use them.

1.c Setting a:focus

The attribute a:focus is useful for navigating via keyboard only. Again IE6 does a:focus wrong. I think, the default browser behaviour to display active links is sufficient. Usually the browser marks an active link with a dotted rectangle.

2. Style guides and CI

2.a Contrast and colour schemes

Our customers usually have very strict style guides and CI definitions. We are very often challenging the fact that we are not allowed to change colours or add new ones. Some style guides define only a few colours, but require us to use gradients of the same colour for all menu levels. Annual reports bear so much content that it is indispensable to implement 5 levels in the navigation. Take RWE Annual Report 2007 for example. They changed the style guide since last year so the RWE Annual Report 2008 takes contrast much more into account. Nevertheless we are very limited in keeping the contrast high and the colours smooth.

2.b More pseudo-classes

If a customer's style guide does not permit the usage of a:visited, eg.: EADS Annual Report 2008, or other pseudo classes like a:hover, a:focus, there is nothing you can do about it, simple as! You could consider bending the rules (for usability not only accessibility reasons). If you’re lucky, the client will approve. Even your non-visually impaired users will be thankful.

3. Structure

3.a Meta tag "keywords"

Some people love the meta tag "keywords". Is there anything that makes use of it, I do not know about? "Keywords" have fallen in disgrace with search engines since people put unrelated keywords in their web pages just to increase search hits for their site. It takes a huge effort to provide reasonable keywords for about 1000 web pages per language for a single annual report we are creating. I think it is not worth worrying about it. Maybe I am wrong, then please let me know.

3.b Meta tag "language"

A WAI compliance test suite fails if you are not using the meta tag "language" to indicate the language of the document. I prefer using a "lang" attribute of the html tag, like the W3C (see this W3C document about proper indicating the document language). This example demonstrates quite well why there are many opinions (including mine) about proper accessibility preparations and no one is right in every case.

3.c Structural hierarchy of headlines

It seems to me, a lot of big websites out there, such as the New York Post, don't care about hierarchical structure at all, jumping from h4 to h6 to h4 to somethinge else. In order to succeed, you need to separate structure from presentation. Also some of our reports don't comply 100%, because of skipping a level because of global css styling etc. This for sure is something we will change in future reports as we got more conscious about headline hierarchy.

3.d Different link texts targeting the same URL

Generally this is to be avoided. Links to the same URL should state the same link text.

3.e Ineffective commonly implemented peculiarities

We use a rule of thumb to provide additional information via title/alt/summary attributes. These attributes need to add more value and information to the tags they describe. If the content next to a table discusses the table in detail and uses a short header as summary, then there is no need for using summary attributes.

3.f Title attribute on links without any additional information

Many web developers provide additional title attributes on links that contain the same text as the link text. This is utterly nonsense. Section 2.4.9 of the WCAG guide clearly states that the purpose of a link can be deduced from its link text. Only (!) if this is ambiguous, it is useful to provide additional information, as H33 of the WCAG clarifies. Hence title attributes on links are only useful and reasonable, if they provide additional information to the user. For example the XLS download icon on the Consolidated Income Statement of the Legal and General Annual Report 2008 provides additional information about the download. Another example of this in the EADS Annual Report 2007 in the right panel under section "PDF Download". Each PDF download has an additional title attribute stating the size of the PDF. We have been explicitly asked to implement this feature in some of our reports, yet I am not convinced of the usefulness.

3.g Layout images and the title/alt attribute

Although some accessibility fundamentalist tell you to use title and alt attributes on every image. IMHO this is not useful in these cases:

the image is only used for the layout
(see Volkswagen Annual Report 2008 - every layout image is embedded via HTML tag instead of background CSS styling to enable the zoom feature)
the content next to the image describes the image and thus no additional information would be provided

4. Features

4.a Zooming and font size manipulation

Upon customer request we have implemented a zooming feature like used in the Postbank Annual Report 2008. Personally, such an implementation - although becoming popular - adds no value to the report or website at all. Why? Because: All modern browsers - including IE7 - provide a native zooming feature to increase or decrease the display size of a web page. Back in the old days with only IE6 available, this feature seemed reasonable. Nowadays it is obsolete. And nobody seems to notice!

If a user needs an increased display size because of his/her visual impairment, s/he will probably use a zoom feature provided by the operating system anyway. With an handmade zooming tool like the one mentioned above, the web content may be better visible but the font size of the browser's program menu, the text in the address bar or the Windows start menu would stay unreadable.

However, there are some drawback with the zooming feature: If the pictures do not zoom, the layout is destroyed. "Elastic" pictures can only be achieved with pictures defined by HTML markup - not with CSS layout images. Thus you "spoil" the HTML and the accessability base with lots of image tags. The best advice I can give is, to rely on the zooming feature of the browser.

To me it seems as if this feature is only added to reassure the ordinary, non-impaired, people, that they have done something to help the visually impaired people. This kind of help is unnecessary, yet imposes a great effort to implement. It is definitely a good way of increasing the implementation time and cost.

4.b Alternatives for non HTML content

Generally we try to provide proper alternative content for every flash application and java script driven action. See our keyfigures comparison tool in the Merck Annual Report 2008 in action and deactivate java script or flash. You'll still be able to access the data.

I often stumble upon website navigations, which only work with java script enabled. Why would you do that on purpose?

There may be content that makes only sense with java script and that cannot be created without it. I totally agree. If you include your tweets on your homepage, then you need java script. Fortunately even screen readers support java script nowadays.The old IBM Homepage Reader has used IE to render the web page with all plug-ins and scripting enabled. Afterwards the content was read aloud. This was great - no more worries about scripting with screen readers! I have not scrutinized other screen readers, but IBM did it back in 2006 and released the sources - there is a chance others might have implemented scripting support as well.

So what do you do?

A. Take a deep breath.

Seriously. Don't just do it because you're told it's cool. Do it, because you want to or feel the need to make the web a better place, of course! Take into consideration who your target audience is, and start from there. How much time do you want to invest?

B. Legal stuff

For many website providers, accessability optimization as such is a nice-to-have but not a must-have.Only if you are governmental organisation or online service provider you need to comply to the WAI/WCAG guidelines by law (see for Germany, for UK and for Austria).

Continue reading "Why WAI is better in theory than practice"

Roadshow 2009 on your next annual report online

nospam@example.com (Thomas Rosenmayr) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:57:38 +0200

I am touring through Europe to present the findings of our Benchmark Analysis 2009 on the status of online annual reporting. I would be happy meeting up with you:

in Amsterdam on September 30
in Milan on October 7
in Amsterdam on October 13
in Zurich on October 15
in Dusseldorf on October 21
in Amsterdam on October 22
in London on October 28/29
in Milan on November 5
in Zurich/Basel on November 11
in Frankfurt on November 10/11/12 (tbc)
in Copenhagen/Malmö on November 16/17 (tbc)
in Hannover/Hamburg on November 25

If I have sparked your interest feel free to make an appointment by mail or phone. If you are in a city not stated above let me know if you would like to meet!

Annual Report conceptualization - an online point of view

nospam@example.com (Marco Schueller) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:22:56 +0200

Annual report season ahead! Summer’s gone and we’ve come to that time of the year again, when stock listed companies shift into gear and start preparing their forthcoming annual report.

There’s been a clear trend evolving over the last years: annual reports are no longer published as printed versions only. Our 2009 annual report survey finds that nearly half the companies listed in major European indices additionally provide a full-fledged HTML-version. This serves the needs of an ever growing share of their target group, which relies on the web to gather investor-relevant information.

Print and online – both channels got their respective strengths and weaknesses. They apply to different kinds of users’ needs and provide specific possibilities and restraints. They could and should complement each other.

Huge amounts of energy, time and money are invested in drawing up the report’s concept and design every year. Theme, message and copy have to be decided upon. For historical reasons, companies and their print agencies are the only ones involved at this initial stage of the process. Print takes the lead while online agencies enter the process at a time, when most of the crucial conceptual decisions have already been taken. Online agencies then face the challenge of smoothly transforming the design and story agreed upon into an online version.

As the annual report is a critical branding tool, it’s essential to the consistency of a company’s communication strategy that the two versions – print and online – are able to get across both: message and image in a similar way. A multidimensional strategy as a foundation for concept development is therefore key to success. In the early stage of conceptualization careful attention should be given to the question, whether the concept’s elements are able to suit the needs of both channels. And this relates to literally every single aspect: design, story, copy, graphics, and tables.

If these elements are exclusively drawn up with regard to the print versions possibilities and restraints, life’s getting pretty hard for us online agencies. One has to expect and accept certain cutbacks while adapting the concept for the online version, if it is too narrowly aligned to the print version’s needs.

To be plain: you can either come up with a print concept that makes a seamless transformation into an HTML version difficult to near impossible. Or you can draw it up in a way that makes a smooth transformation very simple. You should of course aim at the latter one.

This is the first in a series of blog posts throwing some light on the difficulties that arise from an overly print-focussed concept. In the weeks ahead, we’ll take a look at the particular elements of an annual report and present best- and worst-practice examples from an online point of view.

We’ll then return to the broader picture. Every design idea obviously has to prove itself valuable for two channels – online and print. How can we avoid companies and print agencies from focussing too narrowly on the print version while drawing up the annual report’s concept? One way would of cause be to get online agencies involved on an equal footing in the early stage of conceptualizing. Not surprisingly, we’re going to advocate exactly that!

The end of all this is to secure that the annual report’s narrative as well as it’s visual story come to their full effect in both the printed and the online version and therefore effectively support the companies overall communication strategy.

I'd be glad to hear your thoughts on this matter! Please comment below, mail me at marco.schueller@nexxar.com or contact me at twitter/marcoschueller.

Best Firefox Add-ons in use @Nexxar

nospam@example.com (Juergen Tobler) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:03:11 +0200

There are lots of add-ons for firefox available. Just have a look at their starting page. Many are nice, but only a few are truly must-haves in our view. These will be part of the following list:

Text2Link - It is a simple and easy-to-use way to copy the text of a link.
Html Validator - An extension that adds HTML validation. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen in the status bar when browsing.
is.gd Creator - Easy access to the http://is.gd URL shortening service. The currently opened URL, that of a selected link or a selected URL can be shortened and is then stored in the clipboard.
Life-of-request info - 'lori' can tell you how long it takes to load a page and its size.
Web Developer - The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
ColorZilla - With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program.
pwgen - Password Generator - For Sysadmins / Network Engineers / and why not everybody who needs a quick password generator.. simple, yet efficient
CacheViewer - Tells you which files are in your cache and can be deleted one by one.
LinkChecker - Check the validity of links on any webpage. (Firefox 3.0 or less)
AutoCopy - Select text and it's automatically copied to the clipboard. Like Linux.
Linkification - Converts text links into genuine, clickable links (automatically while opening the page).
Copy and Go - Copy marked text, paste it and Go to the URL on a new tab immediately

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2009 Nexxar Online Annual Report Analysis now online

nospam@example.com (Friedrich Einzinger) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:05:00 +0200

After weeks and months of assessing annual reports online we have finished our work on the Benchmark analysis 2009. Following discussions regarding methodology of rankings we decided to fully disclose our criteria including questions and weightings of the 2009 Nexxar Benchmark Analysis. For further details see our “Market Research” section.

For the first time we used our interactive Chart Generator tool for visualizing the development of annual reports either by indices or by way of presentation since 2003. Originally we developed this all the bells and whistles tool to engage users reading keyfigures within annual reports. Now in its third innovation cycle this powerful tool will soon be embedable like YouTube videos. More to come soon!

We are looking forward to receiving your feedback on our Benchmark Analysis 2009. If you are interested in the detailed evaluation of your report, please send an email to office@nexxar.com.

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Nexxar Benchmark Analysis on online Annual Reports

nospam@example.com (Thomas Rosenmayr) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:43:14 +0200

For the sixth time since 2003 we looked at the quality of annual reports online of big cap European and US companies. Since 2003 we analyse the companies of the following indices DAX/MDAX (Germany), Dow (USA), ATX (Austria), EuroStoxx and SMI (Switzerland). Since 2005 we cover FTSE-100 (UK) and AEX/AMX (The Netherlands). This year we also included companies of CAC (France) and MIB (Italy).

Altogether we examined more than 400 companies in July and August 2009. As a first step we distinguish 3 ways of presentation for annual reports on corporate websites.

PDF - the report is offered solely as PDF download [29.3%]
JPG - the report is produced page by page as picture gallery [22.0%]
HTML - the report is implemented as fully-fledged HTML website [48.7%]

Whereas PDF and JPG are quick and cheap to produce both are not proper ways of presentation on the screen. Usability is poor as the use of online tools like Crosslinks, Excel-Downloads, enhanced Search, Interactive Charting, online Glossary or simple text extraction is not possible.

Only a full implementation as HTML websites enables the use of those tools for your annual report that we are used to in our every day work with the internet.

The most surprising outcome this year is the continuing trend towards HTML implementation in times of financial crisis! This underpins the increasing importance of the internet for corporate reporting. It also looks as if a flight to quality in times of crisis not only happens on stock markets.

Presentation of Annual Reports online, analysing 378 Companies

Broken down into individual countries the trend towards HTML is particulary strong in the UK and the Netherlands. Whereas more than 60% of UK companies listed in the FTSE 100 produced an HTML online annual report for 2008, less than 8% did that in France's CAC-40. Also Swiss SMI companies, which we cover since 2003, don't seem to see advantages in HTML financial reporting.

Percentage offering HTML Annual Report per (Country) Index

I don't have a profound reason for this tremendous difference within the country split. In my point of view the perception of the internet as a whole differs. French websites seem to be more design than usablity driven. Maybe part of the reason simply is the availablity (or lack) of good suppliers. So far I didn't come upon a good French, Italian or Swiss producer of HTML annual reports "educating" their homemarkets.