Microsoft Office SystemCustomer Solution Case Study

Virtual Organization Connects Employees and Members with Web

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Nonprofit―Membership organizations

Customer ProfileXBRL US is a not-for-profit organization of five people that promotes the adoption of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) specification by financial institutions within the United States.

Business SituationThe organization needed a solution that could facilitate communication with members, potential members, and geographically dispersed employees who work from home offices.

SolutionXBRL US deployed the Microsoft® Office Live Meeting Web conferencing service to support Web conferences, online training, and webcasts.

Benefits Minimizes costs Provides more effective training Builds community Boosts efficiency Records information

“It would be at least 100 times more expensive to host an event in a traditional setting with 100 people compared to what it costs us to conduct a Live Meeting with the same number of attendees.”David Tauriello, Vice President of Internet Strategy and Member Services, XBRL USXBRL US is a not-for-profit organization that promotes

the adoption of the eXtensible Business Reporting

Language (XBRL) in the United States. Founded in

September 2006, XBRL US employs five people and

more than 50 project contractors who work in varied

locations with no physical headquarters. With teams

spread across the country, the organization needed a

collaboration platform that would facilitate information

sharing and Web conferences. Rather than lease a data

center, XBRL US subscribed to the Microsoft® Office Live

Meeting Web conferencing service. The organization

also deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and

Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. As a result,

XBRL US minimizes costs, provides more effective

training, builds community, and boosts efficiency. The

organization also has the ability to record multimedia

information—a necessity for creating effective

processes.

SituationXBRL US is a virtual organization that is wholly dedicated to increasing the use of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in the United States. XBRL is an open-standards–based specification that employs XML data tags to prepare, publish, exchange, and analyze financial statements. XBRL US was a committee within the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). However, in late 2006 the AICPA created XBRL US to manage the US jurisdiction of a larger organization known as XBRL International. (XBRL International includes numerous jurisdictions, each responsible for the adoption of XBRL in a particular region or country.)

XBRL US has five full-time employees who work from home offices in New York, California, and the Washington, D.C. area. There are more than 100 organizations that are members of XBRL US, and these include leading corporations, government entities, and individuals.

Almost immediately after XBRL US was founded, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) engaged the organization to finish developing an XBRL taxonomy that public company filers can use to report financials to the SEC. With its five full-time employees dedicated to promoting the specification, the organization hired about 50 contractors to complete the project. “It became clear that as a virtual organization, we were going to need

some kind of collaboration platform for document sharing and working together in a single work space,” explains David Tauriello, Vice President of Internet Strategy and Member Services at XBRL US.

In addition, employees needed an effective process for training the rapidly growing XBRL US work force and member base. Not only would employees need to learn how to use unfamiliar IT, but also members would need guidance in the implementation of the XBRL specification. A multimedia conferencing forum was needed to educate and recruit additional members and facilitate communication among employees.

Rather than lease office space for a data center and hire an IT staff, the organization engaged the Microsoft® Certified Partner FrontPages Web Hosting to provide several hosted services that include Windows® SharePoint® Services and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Both environments run on the Windows Server® 2003 Standard Edition operating system.

Employees access the environment by using a client computer that runs the Windows Vista®, Windows XP, or Windows 2000 Advanced Server operating system. Employees also use Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM and the productivity tools provided by Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003, including Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client.

Genesys Conferencing was scheduled to provide the Web conferencing services. Tauriello explains, “Prior to there being an XBRL US, there was an XBRL committee within the AICPA. The committee had already made plans for several events and activities in early 2007 that included a webcast. The event planners had engaged Genesys Conferencing to provide a phone bridge and a platform for showing some slides.”

As the date of the event approached, presenters asked Genesys Conferencing to record the webcast. “We were assured our request was possible, but as the date approached and my membership manager started pulling things together, she discovered that she would not be able to play back recorded media files,” notes Tauriello. “We wound up doing some shuffling at the last minute to patch everything together. But the audio quality of the recorded presentations suffered; and our presentation wasn’t as nearly as polished as I would have hoped—especially given our newness in the marketplace.”

SolutionRather than continue the service from Genesys Conferencing, XBRL US decided to deploy the Microsoft Office Live Meeting (2005) Web conferencing service. “In my previous position we used [Office] Live Meeting, so I was already familiar with it and was very happy to continue using it,” says Tauriello. “I knew it

would provide the kind of functionality we would need.”

The service was easy to start. The six employees simply downloaded the Office Live Meeting client onto their client computers. Since then, when a contract employee or member needs to participate in an Office Live Meeting, they download the client. Most contractors and staff are familiar with Office Live Meeting because XBRL US holds semimonthly town hall meetings with members who use the service. However, when a contractor or staff member needs to learn more about the product, an employee demonstrates how to use it in an Office Live Meeting session.

Recently, the employees at XBRL US subscribed to Office Live Meeting (2007). After Tauriello obtained a Services Subscription license, he set up Office Live Meeting so that users can host an unlimited number of conferences with up to 15 participants. In the future, when XBRL US wants to conduct meetings with more participants, the organization can purchase Add-on Room licenses and host meetings with up to 2,000 attendees. “It was clear to me that the new version of Live Meeting would be a perfect match for what our needs are,” Tauriello explains. “Our five employees are currently testing the beta version of the product. We’re looking at upgrading all of our contractors to Live Meeting (2007) during the fourth quarter of this year.”

“I know there are other solutions in the marketplace, but Live Meeting provides a familiar, consistent interface so employees don’t have to be frustrated learning how to use new features.”David Tauriello, Vice President of

Internet Strategy and Member

XBRL US recently deployed a Web site and corporate intranet by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. The environment is hosted by FrontPages Web Hosting. With Office SharePoint Server 2007, XBRL US can continue work on taxonomy projects in the intranet space. In addition, the company uses the enterprise content management features of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to manage project assets.

BenefitsAs a result of the Office Live Meeting deployment, XBRL US minimizes costs, provides more effective training, builds community, and boosts efficiency. In addition, the organization uses the solution to record and archive meetings.

Minimizes CostsAs more companies become interested in the XBRL specification, the employees at XBRL US have had to create processes to communicate and train a growing number of organizations—without a significant increase in the budget. Office Live Meeting has turned out to be the technology to make this happen. “The notion of getting on some kind of a circuit to tour the country and train companies is impossible,” notes Tauriello. “We are a small organization with a handful of people. There are simply not enough of us to go around and hold those kinds of training sessions. It’s much easier to use Live Meeting to bring a group of 100 to our desktop and show them

how XBRL works through presentations or interactive sessions.”

Organizations that already use XBRL-based reports to file with the SEC help to facilitate the adoption of the specification. “Every couple of weeks we have speakers from organizations get onto Live Meeting and present to companies that are interested in learning more about how to file in XBRL,” explains Tauriello. “We’ve had good success with that. It’s hard to estimate how much more it would cost to host these meetings in a traditional setting, but suffice it to say it would be at least 100 times more expensive to host an event in a traditional setting with 100 people compared to what it costs us to conduct a Live Meeting with the same number of attendees.”

Provides More Effective TrainingCompanies that are in the process of implementing the XBRL specification depend on XBRL US for guidance. With Office Live Meeting, employees can provide hands-on training through multimedia presentations. “If the SEC makes filing in XBRL a requirement of public companies in the United States, which we hope will happen soon, there will be potentially thousands of accounting firms that are going to require training and support in how to file in XBRL,” says Tauriello. “Our goal is to do a great deal of that training using Live Meeting. We could offer courses to certified public accountants for continuing professional education credits. Or we could offer courses for

“Being able to schedule Live Meeting sessions from Office Outlook is fantastic, and I consider the feature a life saver. I can’t say enough about it.”David Tauriello, Vice President of

Internet Strategy and Member

Services, XBRL US

free to organizations that will consider membership in XBRL US as an ongoing benefit to their organization.”

Office Live Meeting is important as an internal training tool, and Tauriello adds, “We do a great deal of informal training on a day-in and day-out basis internally among our own team using Live Meeting. This morning, I used it with a staff member in California to illustrate how to use Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to create a Web Part form that would feed into a list created in another application. Because it involved a couple of tricky steps, it was good to step through the process with her by showing her how I would do it on my screen.”

Builds CommunityWith employees spread across the country, Office Live Meeting rooms and SharePoint sites provide critical tools to facilitate engaged, effective communication. “As a virtual organization, we don’t have a shared office to report back to,” says Tauriello. “Our home office is literally our home. We depend on Live Meeting to help us build a sense of community between employees. I may only see my colleagues a couple of times a year, but we do get together regularly on Live Meeting. The multimedia experience is really smooth. We’re staying in touch with each other, and it’s an excellent way for us to get together without increasing expenses. I know there are other solutions in the marketplace, but Live Meeting provides a familiar, consistent interface so employees

don’t have to be frustrated learning how to use new features like sharing a video file. I say, ‘stay with what you know.’”

In addition, Office Live Meeting can be used by just about anyone, anywhere. “A non-Microsoft Web conferencing program might get trapped in somebody’s firewall,” says Tauriello. “However Live Meeting is accessible to all our contractors and consultants. Many teams meet once a week using Live Meeting so that they can discuss how they are working on individual parts of the same project.” Boosts EfficiencyOffice Live Meeting provides tools that make distributed team meetings more effective than ones conducted over the phone. Participants can view and share access to files or a whiteboard—so that changes can be seen and understood by all. Participants can invite more people to attend an Office Live Meeting at any time.

Another favorite timesaver is the ability to schedule meetings directly from Outlook 2003. This is because employees do not have to call or send numerous e-mail messages to determine when everyone can meet. “Being able to schedule Live Meeting sessions from Office Outlook is fantastic, and I consider the feature a life saver,” explains Tauriello. “I can’t say enough about it.”

SharePoint sites speed productivity because they give distributed

employees a single place to store and access multimedia information such as a training video, an audio conference, or a project spreadsheet. As a result, employees do not have to track down a particular file. Instead, they can access everything they need from a SharePoint site.

Records InformationAs a newly formed organization, XBRL US creates processes that will best support its employees and members. To achieve this, employees try to record as much information as possible so that they can establish efficient workflows. “We’re desperately trying to create the patterns and processes that are going to be successful for us as an organization and for our members,” Tauriello notes. “We want to hold onto everything, and Live Meeting allows us to do that.”

With Office Live Meeting, people can store high-fidelity recordings of meetings directly to their desktops. This feature will be useful for people who want a copy of a training session but do not have access to the organization’s SharePoint sites. “Being able to save meetings to your desktop is a major step forward and will be a huge benefit to us—especially for how we will be using Live Meeting going forward,” concludes Tauriello.

Microsoft Office SystemThe Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: www.microsoft.com/office

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about FrontPages Web Hosting products and services, call (800) 780-4678 or visit the Web site at: www.frontpages-web-hosting.net

For more information about XBRL US products and services, call (202) 448-1985 or visit the Web site at: www.xbrl.us

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2007

Software and Services Microsoft Office

− Microsoft Office Live Meeting

− Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007

− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007