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Strategic Aspects 49

– during the execution of a rule, it processes
transactional data as well as reference and master data. The
former is communicated to the rule by the business process
that sets it off. The latter is directly retrieved in the MDM
repository.

At the end of this second stage of the IS transformation,
the company has a new IT system backbone at its disposal
which embraces the first two intangible assets of
reference/master data and rules. All that remains now is to
take into account the last asset, that of business processes.

2.2.3. Third stage: adding the business processes
repository

Acting on what is already in place, in a non-intrusive
manner, is key but can also turn out to be insufficient. A
company is constantly evolving and its software must be in
line with the business undertaken. After having succeeded in
regaining control of what is already in place, via business
rules and reference/master data repositories, it is time to
overhaul the IT system.

New developments benefit from the reference/master data
and business rules that have already been capitalized.

As this overhaul progresses, new rules emerge to enrich
the repository. The reference and master data, if they have
been correctly modeled during earlier stages, stay as they
are. Making the most of this overhaul, a company can review
its business processes taking care that they do not code them
into hard-coded software. At this stage, Business Process
Management (already well known by corporations) enters
into play. The processes, administered in a dedicated
repository, are based on the rules provided by the BRMS and
the reference/master data provided by the MDM. The circle
is thus closed: the processes, the business rules, and the