Metadata and business rules
Second interesting article in this issue of DM Review was Capturing Intellectual Capital in Metadata By Sid Adelman and Bonnie O'Neil. I believe that Sid and Bonnie are working on a book on this topic - hopefully I will get an early copy to review :-). I mention the article because it seems to me, and I think to them, that one of the key types of metadata, and of intellectual capital, is business rules. Using business rules to codify knowledge not just to capture it but also to allow it to be automated and used to drive consistent decisions across the enterprise can be immensely valuable. You need to identify and capture decisions that are driven by those rules, not just the rules, but this is a comparatively minor additional step.
I blogged about knowledge management and rules once before and my colleague Ian blogged twice recently about the challenges faced in insurance by retiring baby boomers (here and here). The power of business rules capture as a way to stay out of trouble was also caught vividly in this story.
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