Behind & Beyond Data Modeling

Ontologies represent an "operational model" of a business, functional or information domain. The model is based on concepts, their relationships, and rules, and is integrated with data to help visualize the holistic picture. While conceptual data models incorporate the notion of concepts and relationships, they separate the model from related rules, and from the data.

Why Taxonomy and Ontology?

Taxonomy – a common language which is controlled, maintained and governed – can mitigate two common but different situations:

• a data-intensive organization suffers a simple data entry error that persists across multiple processes, organizations and systems

• a global organization faces a quarterly nightmare consolidating financial reports across multiple business units and regions

While taxonomy is the study of classifications and taxonomies are those systems of classifications, ontology focuses on a logical theory of existence, so that all objects and facets relevant to a domain may be related and represented. We achieve this logical theory through assertions and inferences, where the logic around assertions can be tested mathematically. Additional facts can be inferred from well-formed assertions.

Taxonomies and ontologies are especially productive in organizations that have grown:

• organically and underinvested in technology, resulting in a web of patchwork systems and a language that has evolved out of habit rather than through systematic alignment

• by merger and acquisition, employing cross-references and mapping to establish technological integration, without associated business alignment and Data Governance

Client Impact

Sagence Group has created taxonomies and ontologies to model organizational reference data, including roles and responsibilities, and other organizational facets, and to enable workflow automation. We've pioneered an approach to reference data definition and classification by applying a discipline based on ontology modeling.

• One of the most successful financial services firms in the world needed to develop a taxonomy for its operations organization and to enhance its reference data capabilities. A taxonomy would reduce friction in communication as complex transactions and relationships that crossed traditional firm boundaries began to evolve.

• A global financial services firm, facing the integration of several recent major acquisitions, sought to create data standards, detailed taxonomies and governance structures.

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