Today, models are available that you can use to jumpstart your modeling effort. Why start from scratch, when a starter model exists? Some model developers, such as David Hays, Len Silverson, Bill Inmon, and William Fowler, have published many of their models in books. Larger corporations, such as IBM and NCR, have built entire lines of businesses around their models, with a price that reflects that commitment.
Models are available to meet your budget, from the price of a book to hundreds of thousands of dollars. With so much intellectual capital invested by the architects of these models, wouldn't your organization benefit from using one?
The criticism I hear most often is that these models are too abstract. They don't use the terms of your organization. Often, they don't even use the standard terminology of your industry. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "I can't read my company in this model," I'd be rich.
The beauty of a universal model is its independence of any specific company or industry. These models represent what it takes to be a business, any business. The terms used are universal to any community engaged in the exchange of goods and services. If you were to model what is taught in business schools, you'd end up with something that looks a lot like one of these models. In fact, completely different groups of people engaged in the modeling process, completely independently of one another, have all emerged with amazingly similar data models. There must be some sort of truth lurking behind these models. Just as a thorough understanding of fundamental business concepts helps you better engage in business, it also supports the information structures that underlie any business. Since universal models are grounded in the basic architecture of any business, they can be readily adapted to almost any organization.
For example, Table 1 provides a list of fundamental business concepts that exist in almost any successful business. Although the terms may differ a little among models, the same business concepts pop up in almost every universal model. So you may find Interested Party, Involved Party, or simply Party used instead of Business Party. Others prefer the term Location, Address, or Geography for what I call Locator. What's important is not the term, but the concept as expressed through the definition.
| Fundamental Business Concept | Definition |
| Business | An organization that engages in commerce as the provider of products and services to some community. (Can be Ònot for profit.Ó) |
| Business Parties | The people and organizations and the relationships that exist between them that are of interest to the organization. |
| Locators | Information used to locate and communicate with business parties (such as addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses) or to find a geographic location. |
| Events | Noteworthy happenings that affect the business. Can be external (such as an act of nature, regulator, competitor, or customer) or internally generated. Normally demands some sort of a response, usually by initiating one of the organizationÕs business processes. |
| Agreements | Arrangements between business parties involving the exchange of goods (usually products) or services. Agreements specify the terms and conditions by which the business parties agree to abide. A contract is a special version of an agreement in which the business parties involved further agree that the arrangement is legally binding. |
| Accounts | The record of the events that have occurred, or are planned to occur, that affect some aspect of the business and involve the use of some business resource, usually represented in financial terms. |
| Products and Services | The things that the organization produces or the activities that the organization can perform and offers to provide to business parties in exchange for some consideration. Although the consideration is usually financial, it can also be products and services. |
| Markets | Specific communities of business parties that are interested in purchasing the organizationÕs products and services. |
| Opportunities | A recognized possibility to attract new customers or enhance the relationship with existing ones, including all aspects of campaign development and tracking. |
| Resources | Things the organization uses in the process of conducting business (such as people, money, supplies, equipment, or real estate). |
| Things | Items that the organization must have available or know about to conduct business. These items may be tangible objects or intangible ideas. |
| Customers | Business parties that engage in commerce as a receiver of products and services. Typically, the customer is the business party that is ultimately financially responsible for the purchase, but the term is expanding to include other parties that can influence the decision to purchase or use the product or service purchased. |
| Sales (Purchases) | Events that occur in commerce when business parties agree to purchase the products and services of another business party. A sales event may progress through many stages that include offering the product or service to a community; selection by the customer that may result in the placement of an order or reservation for the product or service; and negotiation of the terms and conditions of the agreement including the price, the payment, and the delivery of the product (transfer of ownership) or service (performing the agreed-to activity). |
You probably don't see the terms that your organization or industry uses for these business concepts. To use the universal model effectively, you must inventory your own business concepts and map your vocabulary into the fundamental business concepts. Table 2 provides such a mapping for the terms found in the EU-Rent case study from the Business Rules Group's initial paper, "Defining Business Rules - What Are They Really?"
| Fundamental Business Concept | EU-Rent Terms |
| Business | EU-Rent, EU-Corp., EU-Fly, EU-Stay |
| Business Parties | Renter, authorized driver, loyalty program member |
| Locators | Address, phone number, email address |
| Events | Car maintenance, car transfer |
| Agreements | Rental agreement, loyalty program membership, corporate master agreement |
| Accounts | Not discussed in case study |
| Products and Services | Car rental service |
| Markets | Towns and countries where branches are located |
| Opportunities | Loyalty program |
| Resources | Branch, branch manager, booking clerk, car |
| Things | Cars |
| Customers | Customer (assumption is that the renter is the customer) |
| Sales (Purchases) | Reservation, rental, return |
Interesting insights emerge when you map your terms into these business concepts. Most organizations realize that they don't have a term that means "a person or organization." We have a universal business concept for which no one has taken the time to assign a term ... which is why terms like Business Party get invented. What's more interesting is that information that really is about a specific person or organization is buried behind the role that those business parties can assume (such as renter, branch, branch manager, or loyalty program member). Have you ever wondered why you have to keep filling out your name and address on so many forms when you do business with the same organization? It may be because we've built our business processes around the roles that business parties play, not around the business party. Thus, we have our first source of redundant data: the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the people and organizations with which we do business.
We can also see that
many of our terms really represent events that occur during the life of a sales
transaction. For EU-Rent, the sale starts with a reservation event that creates
the basic terms and conditions of the car rental request (who wants to rent the
car, when they want to pick it up and return it, what class of car they want to
reserve, what discounts are available, and the expected price for the rental).
The rental agreement is not legally binding yet. It's possible that the prospective renter won't show up or that EU-Rent will not have the requested car class on hand. The rental agreement represents the intent to execute an actual car rental under the terms specified at the time of the reservation, but neither side can be forced to abide by those terms.
When the renter shows up to pick up the reserved car, the rental agreement is completed by identifying the specific car assigned to the customer, including any additional options the customer has selected, such as insurance coverage, and calculating the expected rental fees. When the customer signs the contract documentation, the agreement becomes legally binding. However, the sales event is not complete until the renter returns the car and pays for the services EU-Rent provided. The sales event is actually a major event that involves a series of subevents: the reservation, the rental, and the return.
This column rebutted
the initial objections many MIS workers have to universal models. My next column
will build on this foundation by discussing in greater detail the advantages of
using a universal model.
Terry Moriarty, president of Inastrol, a San Francisco-based information
management consultancy, specializes in customer relationship information and metadata
management. She authored Enterprise View (originally the Repository Report and later the
Data Architect) column for Database Programming & Design. You can reach her via
email at terry@inastrol.com.
Copyright © 2001 Terry Moriarty ALL RIGHTS RESERVED