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Strategic Aspects 55

Figure 2.5 illustrates the evolution of intangible assets,
over a number of years of IT system transformation, within
the insurance company SMABTP [BON 09].

2.3.2. Maintaining knowledge and the strategic break

Intangible assets, properly described and well-accounted
for, enable a company to benefit from a considerable lever in
the maintenance of the knowledge domain, for the practice of
business, as well as for IT practitioners. Knowing an IT
system via its intangible assets allows us to learn about it
much more rapidly and reliably:

– business users no longer get caught up in existing IT
that is often the only way to gain access to certain business
knowledge. Instead, they have a direct access to intangible
asset stocks. Maintaining knowledge, in particular within
complex and evolving organizations that characterize
modern companies, cannot survive the trap set out by fixed
and stratified hard-coded software, nor informal (textual)
documentation, rarely up to date and non executable.
Intangible asset stocks are expressed at the same time in
formal terms, understandable by business users, governable
with no IT knowledge, but also directly executable by the
tools of the MDM, BRMS and BPM;
– IT practitioners focus on the technical quality of
software i.e. the infrastructure that must use the tools of the
MDM system, BRMS and BPM. They return to their original
business, that of IT engineering. They have a methodological
role and accompany business users in their assets modeling,
and managing them over a given time period. They no longer
have to assume business knowledge, which is impoverished
anyway, in compensation for the one that no longer
completely exists on the business users’ side.