Organization

We recommend that you organize business assets in a hierarchical manner for good visibility and ease of access. You can implement hierarchical structure with catalogs and sub-catalogs. For more information on creating catalogs and sub-catalogs refer to the Creating Catalogs topic.

You can design hierarchical structure with the help of the classification themes based on:

1. General and specific business assets

The hierarchical structure includes:

• General business assets under catalogs
• Specific business assets under sub-catalogs

For example, agreement is a general asset type whereas contract and purchase order are specific business assets.


2. Areas of interest or subject areas

The hierarchical structure includes:

• Umbrella asset type under catalogs
• Subject areas under sub-catalogs

For example, you can breakdown the organization (umbrella asset type) into subject areas like sales, products, orders, shipments, and other related areas.

The following image displays a hierarchical structure with catalogs and sub-catalogs for business terms.

We recommend you to take note of the following things when building a classification theme:

• Every asset type may not fit neatly into a single classification.
• There may be instances where a term may be in multiple places.
• The nesting depth should not go beyond five levels.
• Avoid technical jargon or complexity.

We recommend you to have:

• Single business glossary: If you can standardize names and meaning of all business assets across the organization.
• Multiple business glossaries: If agreements cannot be reached on a single meaning for a business asset type. For example, in industries like healthcare and insurance you need to have multiple business glossaries.