Ontology example: description of the business entities and their relationships

In my recent posts, I have talked a lot about the model-based enterprise and already after my first post: Model-Based – an introduction I got a lot of feedback where most of the audience was automatically associating the words Model-Based to a 3D CAD Model.
Trying to clarify this through my post: Why Model-Based – the 3D CAD Model stirred up the discussion even more leading into: Model- Based: The confusion.

A Digital Twin of the Organization

At that time, I briefly touched on business models and business processes that also need to be reshaped and build for a digital enterprise. Business modeling is necessary if you want to understand and streamline large enterprises, where nobody can overview the overall company. This approach is like systems engineering where we try to understand and simulate complex systems.

With this post, I want to close on the Model-Based series and focus on the aspects of the business model. I was caught by this catchy article: How would you like a digital twin of your organization? which provides a nice introduction to this theme.  Also, I met with Steve Dunnico, Creator and co-founder of Clearvision, a Swedish startup company focusing on modern ways of business modeling.

 

Introduction

 Jos (VirtualDutchman):  Steve can you give us an introduction to your company and the which parts of the model-based enterprise you are addressing with Clearvision?

Steve (Clearvision):  Clearvision started as a concept over two decades ago – modeling complex situations across multiple domains needed a simplistic approach to create a copy of the complete ecosystem. Along the way, technology advancements have opened up big-data to everyone, and now we have Clearvision as a modeling tool/SaaS that creates a digital business ecosystem that enables better visibility to deliver transformation.

As we all know, change is constant, so we must transition from the old silo projects and programs to a business world of continuous monitoring and transformation.
Clearvision enables this by connecting the disparate parts of an organization into a model linking people, competence, technology services, data flow, organization, and processes.
Complex inter-dependencies can be visualized, showing impact and opportunity to deliver corporate transformation goals in measured minimum viable transformation – many small changes, with measurable benefit, delivered frequently.  This is what Clearvision enables!

Jos: What is your definition of business modeling?

Steve: Business modeling historically, has long been the domain of financial experts – taking the “business model” of the company (such as production, sales, support) and looking at cost, profit, margins for opportunity and remodeling to suit. Now, with the availability of increased digital data about many dimensions of a business, it is possible to model more than the financials.

This is the business modeling that we (Clearvision) work with – connecting all the entities that define a business so that a change is connected to process, people, data, technology and other dimensions such as cost, time, quality.  So if we change a part, all of the connected parts are checked for impact and benefit.

Jos: What are the benefits of business modeling?

Steve: Connecting the disparate entities of a business opens up limitless opportunities to analyze “what is affected if I change this?”.  This can be applied to simple static “as-is” gap analyses, to the more advanced studies needed to future forecast and move into predictive planning rather than reactive.

 The benefits of using a digital model of the business ecosystem are applicable to the whole organization.  The “C-suite” team get to see heat-maps for not only technology-project deliveries but can use workforce-culture maps to assess the company’s understanding and adoption of new ways of working and achievement of strategic goals.  While at an operational level, teams can collaborate more effectively knowing which parts of the ecosystem help or hinder their deliveries and vice-versa.

Jos: Is business modeling applicable for any type or size of the company?

The complexity of business has driven us to silo our way of working, to simplify tasks to achieve our own goals, and it is larger organizations which can benefit from modeling their business ecosystems.  On that basis, it is unlikely that a standalone small business would engage in its own digital ecosystem model.  However, as a supplier to a larger organization, it can be beneficial for the larger organizations to model their smaller suppliers to ensure a holistic view of their ecosystem.

The core digital business ecosystem model delivers integrated views of dependencies, clashes, hot-spots to support transformation

Jos: How is business modeling related to digital transformation?

Digital transformation is an often heard topic in large corporations, by implication we should take advantage of the digital data we generate and collect in our businesses and connect it, so we benefit from the whole not work in silos.  Therefore, using a digital model of a business ecosystem will help identify areas of connectivity and collaboration that can deliver best benefit but through Minimum Viable Transformation, not a multi-year program with a big-bang output (which sometimes misses its goals…).

Today’s digital technology brings new capabilities to businesses and is driving competence changes in organizations and their partner companies.  So another use of business modeling is to map competence of internal/external resources to the needed capabilities of digital transformation.  Mapping competence rather than roles brings a better fit for resources to support transformation.  Understanding which competencies we have and what the gaps are pr-requisite to plan and deliver transformation.

Jos: Then perhaps close with your Clearvision mission where you fit (uniquely)?

Having worked on early digital business ecosystem models in the late 90’s, we’ve cut our teeth on slow processing time, difficult to change data relationships and poor access to data, combined with a very silo’d work mentality.  Clearvision is now positioned to help organizations realize that the value of the whole of their business is greater than the sum of their parts (silos) by enabling a holistic view of their business ecosystem that can be used to deliver measured transformation on a continual basis.

 Jos: Thanks Steve for your contribution and with this completing the series of post related to a model-based enterprise with its various facets. I am aware this post the opinion from one company describing the importance of a model-based business in general. There are no commercial relations between the two of us and I recommend you to explore this topic further in case relevant for your situation.

Conclusion

Companies and their products are becoming more and more complex, most if it happening now, a lot more happening in the near future. In order to understand and manage this complexity models are needed to virtually define and analyze the real world without the high costs of making prototypes or changes in the real world. This applies for organizations, for systems, engineering and manufacturing coordination and finally in-field operating systems.  They all can be described by – connected – models. This is the future of a model-based enterprise

Coming up next time: CIMdata PDM Roadmap Europe and PDT Europe. You can still register and meet a large group of people who care about the details of aspects of a digital enterprise