Prologue

Because of the dramatic changes in the various industries, companies are looking for technologies that help them streamline their business processes and systems, and leverage their business information across the organization.

The IBM Information Framework is a family of data, process and object models that can be used as a backbone of business intelligence solutions across various industries. This article considers appliance of IBM IFW models in banking, telecom and retail industries.

One Information Framework – various industries

IBM Information Framework Banking Data Warehouse represents fully comprehensive banking data warehouse solution consist of following major components:

• Banking/Telecom/Retail Data warehouse model (BDW/TDW/RDW) - The Banking/Telecom/Retail Data Warehouse Model consolidates the data from throughout your enterprise into one comprehensive view. Independent of any particular account, product, organization or channel hierarchy, it consists of more than 80% of the data structures typically needed by a retailer for a data warehouse and can be automatically generated into a physical data warehouse database once it has been customized to meet your exact requirements
• Business solution templates (BST) - The Banking/Telecom/Retail Business Solution Templates organize the data into specific areas, which enables business managers to quickly and easily specify analytical reporting requirements. Each template consists of a series of measures and dimensions like the key performance indicators (KPIs) for a retail organization, such as sales amounts, gross profit, promotional discounts or stock on hand. To reflect the exact needs of your particular retail organization, you can customize the supplied set of predefined templates or create new templates.
• Financial/Telecom/Retail Services Data Model (FSDM/TSDM/RSDM) - The Banking/Telecom/Retail Services Data Model is a customizable hierarchy of business terms and definitions that provides a direct link between analytical requirements, data concepts and your core environment. Designed as a jump start in the model development process, it enables you to maximize the value of your existing information.

Particular business context is embedded in each of these components but essence of business content is represented across Business solution templates.

Banking industry

The pre-defined templates include these areas:

• Risk Management (Credit Risk Analysis, Credit Risk Assessment, Credit Risk Mitigation Assessment, Customer Credit Risk Profile, Involved Party Exposure , Liquidity Risk Analysis, Non Performing Loan Analysis, Operational Risk Assessment, Operational Risk Loss Analysis, Value At Risk Analysis, etc )
• Profitability (Activity Based Costing Analysis, Channel Profitability, Customer Lifetime Value Analysis, Customer Profitability, Location Profitability, Organization Unit Profitability, Performance Measurement, Product Analysis, Product Profitability, Transaction Profitability Analysis, etc, )
• Asset Liability Management (Credit Loss Allowance Analysis, Equity Position Exposure, Financial Management Accounting, Funds Maturity Analysis, Income Analysis, Interest Rate Sensitivity Analysis, Liquidity Analysis, Inward Payments, Outward Payments, etc )
• Relationship Marketing (CRM) (Campaign Analysis, Cross Sell Analysis, Customer Attrition Analysis, Customer Behavior, Customer Complaints Analysis, Customer Delinquency Analysis, Customer Loyalty, Individual Customer Profile, Lead Analysis, Market Analysis, Wallet Share Analysis, etc)
• Regulatory Compliance (Balance Sheet Classified Approach Analysis, Balance Sheet Order Of Liquidity Approach Analysis, Balance Sheet Net Assets Approach Analysis , Balance Sheet Portfolio Basis Approach Analysis , Cash Flow Direct Analysis, Cash Flow Indirect Analysis, Income Statement By Function Analysis, Income Statement By Nature Analysis, etc)

Telecom industry

Here is a typical sample list of BST’s by business areas:

• Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) (Campaign Analysis, Cross Sell Analysis, Customer Acquisition Analysis, Customer Churn Analysis, Customer Behavior Analysis, Customer Complaints Analysis, Customer Interaction Analysis, Customer Delinquency Analysis, Wallet Share Analysis)
• Financial and Operating Reporting (Credit and Collections Analysis, Financial Management Accounting, Revenue Analysis, Individual Credit Risk Profile, Service Order Processing Analysis)
• Profitability (Sales Channel Analysis, Customer Profitability, Product Profitability, Customer Lifetime Value Analysis)
• Usage (Network Usage Analysis, Service Usage Analysis)

Retail Industry

Retail organizations operate in a world of brutal global competition, slim margins and unpredictable consumers. As consumer markets fragment—with consumers gravitating towards lowest-cost providers for commodities and towards premium niche providers for goods with high personal value—retailers must find ways to adapt more quickly. Complying with increasingly strict regulatory requirements and combating industry trends like the rise of mega retailers only adds to the imperative to act quickly or be pushed aside.

The pre-defined IBM Information Framework BST templates include these areas:

• Merchandising management
• Products & services management
• Store operations management
• Corporate finance management
• Supply chain
• Multi-chain
• Regulatory compliance

Looking For More Industry Models?

Besides Banking, Telecom and Retail models, Information framework supporting following models: Insurance, Health Plan and Financial markets.

Epilogue

IBM Information framework is outstanding designed structure that can be applied in almost every industry as a backbone of analytical information infrastructure. There are two reasons how is it possible:

• Usage of abstraction in model design process which results with model divided into different abstraction levels
• Different abstraction levels allows gradual introduction of business concepts in  the model  - from general business concepts in lower levels  to fully detailed business concepts that allows fully appliance in  particular industry

References:

IBM Information Framework

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/industry-models/

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