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intervene to decide on an allocation, sometimes with a level
of certainty that is not absolute. The choice of asset classes is
important as audit controls are likely to highlight errors and
reduce the company’s rating. Furthermore, certain financial
statement consolidations are based on these classifications of
assets. Before implementing an MDM approach, this
company used tools which were not strong enough to deal
with the classification (in part based on an Excel-type
desktop management), which users were not able to
sufficiently coordinate to produce reliable classifications.
Faced with large financial flows which needed to be
classified, managers would make the users proceed to
classifications, even if the level of knowledge remained fairly
approximate on certain types of flows. Unfortunately, users
were not yet able to indicate the degree of reliability of their
classifications. They were under the control of managers who
needed to liquidate the flow assets that needed to be
classified, at all cost, including a lack of reliability as they
did not feel the immediate consequences. The mediocrity of
this system went as far as stopping users from correcting
themselves because, due to the fact that they knew nothing
of the reliability of the classifications, they did not dare
modify them, even when errors that needed to be dealt with
were obvious. How, then, do we correct information if we
don’t know who is responsible for it nor its degree of
reliability?

Thanks to an MDM system for financial flows, this
company secured the classification management of its flows.
A census was done, for each user, in order to determine
degrees of reliability for each type of financial flow. This
level of reliability is then associated with all flow
classifications.

If a user, for a previously identified type of flow, has a
level of reliability inferior to the information on classification
which is already at hand, then the MDM system forbids the