Tera-Tom here!  Have you ever considered how important it is to model your data?  Companies model their data for the same reason that Boeing builds model planes and wind tunnels!  They can be inexpensively tested and altered.  Modeling your business is monumental, but doing so in a timely manner is also important.  As we like to say, “Model your business, but don’t make a business of modeling.”

I am 100% convinced that modeling your data is more important now than ever.  Why?  Because of the revolutionary change in the way companies process data.  Users are building answer sets by combining data from multiple systems.  If each individual system is modeled, then the next evolution will be an enterprise model that sits above each individual model.  This provides the blueprint for inexpensively testing and altering processes within the enterprise.  The enterprise model describes the relationship between data from different systems and how that data from different systems can be analyzed and joined.  This infrastructure provides an outrageous competitive advantage to the company who implements.

Different platforms, technologies, and vendors will come and go, but investing in the model will provide an infrastructure that will continually improve how a company utilizes data.

Here is the next reason to model your data.  The most important and brilliant minds in your business are those with extreme knowledge of the business, your industry, and how the data from different tables is related.  These are the modelers!  Unfortunately, the business users and the developers are light years apart from understanding the model.  Some users have the business knowledge, but not enough data experience, and some developers have the data knowledge but not enough industry experience.  That is why you must load the model inside the desktop of every developer and user as a fundamental philosophy.

Allow every user and developer to see every table or view visually, and with the click of a button, see all other tables in the relationship. Then, allow them to build and develop the reports and analyses by clicking on what they want.

If your desktop tools don’t show the models in the best light, then you will soon be working in the dark.  In the year 2014, your users should be able to click on a table or view and see what data is related from different systems.  They can then click on what reports or analysis they want from any tables related within the enterprise, and the desktop tool will consolidate and bring back the data transparently.

Victor Hugo once said, “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”  Combining the model with the enterprise tool is an idea whose time has come.  What if the number one modeling tool was suddenly bundled with the number one enterprise tool?  That would be a match made in data and business heaven.  Watch for an announcement to be made this week at ERworld.com.

For those of you that are interested in hearing myself and my director of Sales, John Nolan, speak more about modeling your data and the Nexus, please join us for ERworld this Thursday at 10 am.  You can register for free at ERworld.com.

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