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Your company's reference data quite literally provides the frame of reference that allows business users to obtain information. Your ability to access information is only as efficient as the way you organize and deploy this critical set of business metadata.

integrated reference data taxonomy …

  • Integrated - coherent parts of a logical framework
    1. Across processes
    2. Across analytics
    3. Across business disciplines
    4. Across IT design components
  • Reference Data – the subset of business metadata that defines the paths or dimensions for access to information
  • Taxonomy – a systematic means of organizing and classifying data

… to give you the latitude to leverage your information.

While all companies have 'reference data', many lack an integrated taxonomy. For BI tools to be effectively used, the dimensional reference data they use must be rationalized. These are business elements that must be defined by business users ... den Karte can expedite this process.

dimensional puzzle

In defining the reference taxonomy, four key building blocks (members, hierarchies, business rules, and other properties) must be defined and rationalized for each domain.

More importantly, since there are multiple reference domains (eg product, channel, ledger chart of account, etc), these domains must be synchronized to obtain useful results ... which requires understanding both the business intent and the logical data model in which the reference data exists.

den Karte can help business users

  • define reference data domains that (i) address specific business purposes and (ii) interact logically with other reference data domains
  • enumerate members that are uniquely defined and provide a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive set of values for each domain
  • construct hierarchies that allow users to efficiently aggregrate and navigate within a domain
  • capture transformation and other business rules that support mapping incoming data into the appropriate member(s) for each reference domain
  • deliver the reference data (members, hierarchy, rules and other properties) to technology teams in useable form

Reference Taxonomy
A good reference taxonomy is like the lines of latitude and longitude on a map. It defines a common method to locate specific points of interest and measure distances and directions to be traveled to reach a destination in an objective and repeatable manner.

Common reference domains include
  • chart of accounts
  • product
  • organization
  • channel
  • customer segment
  • portfolio
  • customer ID
  • investment ID
  • geography
  • chronology
  • legal entity
  • accounting basis
  • cost element
Companies often have a number of industry-specific dimensions to meet unique reporting requirements.
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