Scenarios for creating a business glossary

These scenarios show how two different organizations used IBM® InfoSphere® Business Glossary and IBM InfoSphere Business Glossary Anywhere to develop and manage their metadata to solve business problems.

Insurance: Risk information

A leading insurance company hired several new claims agents as part of a recent expansion. To process claims correctly, agents must know how the company defines levels of risk. After three months, the company realized that claims filed by these agents were being filed incorrectly, leading to longer processing time and customer dissatisfaction. For example, a new agent was instructed to file a claim for an Assigned Risk 3 after deductible. However, the agent did not know what Assigned Risk 3 was and did not know where to find more information, so the claim was filed in the wrong category.

The company deployed InfoSphere Business Glossary to define and categorize terms as they relate to the business. In addition to a definition, the business analyst for the company associated each term with an asset, such as a specific table or column in the company database. The business analyst then assigned the terms to individual stewards to maintain the terms according to the needs of the company. As the definitions change and as new terms are added, stewards can update the terms so that the definition for each term remains current.

When the company hires new claims agents, they can use InfoSphere Business Glossary to browse for terms that they are unfamiliar with, decreasing the time that it takes for them to understand how to file new cases. In addition, the agents can view related business terms, instructions on how to handle related claims, and the location in the database where data for each term is stored.

Manufacturing: Production information

The chief financial officer (CFO) of a leading manufacturing company wants to determine the profitability of a production line by using specific financial parameters. The CFO contacted the head of the finance department to obtain information about each stage of production, but data was not available. Without information about each stage of production, the CFO could not determine where operating costs were highest or lowest.

The finance department used InfoSphere Business Glossary to categorize each stage of production. Members of the finance team assigned terms within each category to specific database tables and columns. These relationships enable business analysts at the company to create a business intelligence report on revenues and operating expenses at each stage of production.

Business analysts at the company used InfoSphere Business Glossary to view each category, check the meaning of its terms, and select which terms were needed for the report. The analysts contacted the database management team to build a report based on the selected terms. In addition to understanding the semantic meaning of these terms, the analysts used business lineage to view the data sources that populated the business intelligence report. The CFO was able to review financial parameters for each stage of production to analyze where changes were necessary. While viewing the report, the CFO used InfoSphere Business Glossary Anywhere to understand the definitions of the fields that were used in the report without having to contact the finance department.