Social Technologies (Aug 2011)
The Importance of Meta-Knowledge for Business and Information Management
Abstract
Summary. The article analyzes meta-modeling—the trend of information systems’ engineering and its problems. An important feature of modern organization systems is the handling of information systems while exploiting, supporting and using certain organization processes. Knowledge (and meta-knowledge) is becoming a key component in information systems as well as an important resource for enterprise. In order to adapt to modern business conditions it is necessary to unanimously manage all enterprise activity processes; and information sharing is inevitably necessary within an enterprise as well as while communicating with business partners. Therefore enterprises should improve their business processes (business information) and manage them efficiently through the proper use of resources.In essence, information processes could be best described through the description of their role and purpose in implementing data storage processes, analyzing different processes in organization and the relationship between them. Each organization has its specifics, subjects and structure, therefore organizational information systems need be applied to the surrounding. From the point of view of the information process management, each organization is a net of related and interactive processes.Every organization should understand these processes to be able to improve and optimize them. Activity modeling helps to optimize the organization structure and activity, brings clarity, and aids in achieving the outstanding activity targets. Information about organization processes – consumers’ informational requirements that are accumulated in the activity models – becomes the structure of meta-knowledge that is the basis for different information systems’ solutions.To ensure the full informational flow to the company it is advisable to identify all possible resources and classify them. Organizations have to shape and analyze activity processes, i.e. make descriptions of real activity processes that could help understand the compatibility of all company levels. Today, enterprises need an integrated view of data quality and metaknowledge management, which can help to improve the sequence and consistency of the data obtained as well as business rules. In such a way, the circumstance-based enterprise decisions will be based on the only true version. Nowadays, each enterprise should aim for straightforward processing of the constantly increasing amounts of information, within as short an amount of time time as possible, meeting today’s information requirements
