Brett Simnett, consulting director at Friend Studio, describes a quiet revolution reshaping how reports are created, discovered and read today.

The clocks have gone back, there is a chill in the air and the leaves are falling. This is the time of year when December year-end reporters are knee-deep in planning and development for their 2025 annual report.

It’s the start of another six months of sweat, tears and fact-checking.

We put so much effort into our annual reports. That one complete moment of truth in the year. But, as you plan for your next report, have you thought about who is seeing your efforts?

• Who’s reading it?
• Where are they from?
• What content do they look at?
• What devices are they using?
• How long are they reading it for?
• How often do they come back?

If you are using traditional print-first reporting and finance software you are probably struggling to get an answer. And, without analytics, you’ll never really know!

The approach to creating a report has remained the same for many years, using print design tools to deliver print-first PDF files. But, as our world has become ever more digitally focused (how often have you looked at your mobile phone today, be honest!), the way we interact with reporting is changing. We are reading more online, on mobile devices, and AI is helping us do it. And, we are finding what we want to read through search engines. 

• Did you know your print-first PDF content isn’t readily accessed by search engines, meaning the great content won’t be found by AI, and will default to less-reliable sources?
• Did you know your print-first PDF is NOT your mandatory report, it’s the iXBRL ESEF file you create from it?

Don’t get me wrong, PDFs still have their place, I for one, like to read the detail in a format where I can comment and annotate. But, in the digital and AI age, it’s how you create that PDF (and other formats) that matters.

Now, I'm going to talk about digital-first – one of the most misunderstood phrases in reporting today!

As a reporting communication agency we see requests for ‘digital-first’ regularly, without any commonly understood definition of what it means.

OK, let's be clear.

Digital-first does NOT mean an online-first report. That is just one part of the story.

Truly digital-first simply means the report is created from digital software (HTML), not print software (InDesign). As explained by the FRC, this digital-first design process ensures higher quality data and content consistency across all versions of the report – PDF, online, iXBRL filing and print. An online report version is a beneficial by-product of a digital-first process. And because the source content comes from HTML, all the formats are more accessible to search engines and AI. 

But this isn’t a reality yet, right?

Well, yes and no. 

Single-source financial data systems have been with us for a while now – Workiva being the most visible – but the output quality remains a challenge. There is no AI-friendly online version. Design is limited, complex and expensive. And accessibility compliance is a manual and slow post-production task. At great cost, it still only delivers a PDF that can never be truly accessible.

Now, after four years of mandatory ESEF filings, the UK regulators expect digital reporting to be taken as seriously as other aspects of the annual report and have recently begun sending private letters to companies seeking explanation for poor quality digitisation.

The good news is we are starting to see more companies use digital-first design software to create truly single-source, accessible reporting. And this is transformational.

Airtel Africa, the FTSE 100 telecommunications business, published its first multi-format, digital-first iXBRL report this year (2025). It was created with Reportl, an innovative, next-generation design software that simultaneously creates the fully compliant and accessible online report with iXBRL tagging, alongside PDF and print reporting. This eliminates the extra steps to tag the PDF version. And all the formats are accessible by search engines and AI.

Oakley Capital has been using Reportl since 2023 creating fully digital, machine and human-readable reports, and in 2024 took home seven trophies from six different awards programmes.

And with full user analytics data companies have evidence of how their reports are being seen, and by whom.

• 85% of visitors are choosing the online report over the PDF
• Digital-first ESEF reports attract 12x more visitors than the print-first PDF
• But digital-first PDF download rates are also 10x higher than print-first PDFs
• This is because digital online reports and PDFs attract more users from Google and AI searches, and remain higher in the rankings long after launch.

I've been working in reporting for over 30 years! Reporting is and always has been a great tool to craft a company's story and demonstrate its successes and challenges. But it has always been a challenge to calculate the return on the huge investment we all put into the process. But with digital reporting user analytics we are finally entering an era when it's possible to see who is engaging with our efforts. 

Reporting digitisation is not something to be scared of. With the right software, it is easier than you imagine. It should be seen as an amazing opportunity to maximise your ROI and start to really be seen by your audiences.