When building a system for a business, there exists a wide variety of methodologies to choose from, as well as numerous existing models, profiles and plug-ins across any given enterprise. What should be the starting point of the effort, business concepts, is often lost in overwhelming technical detail. Many profiles are at such an intricate technology level (e.g., DDL, XSD, AndroMDA) that a developing team is faced with too many technical choices, leading to inconsistent models. Technology concerns drag down the level of abstraction to the point in which business concerns can get "lost in the weeds." Aligning models becomes too difficult and too much work, resulting almost invariably in disconnected model silos.
A business concept model, unifying business concepts across an enterprise, is the basis for a solution to this dilemma. A concept model represents the concepts and defining relationships of the business. It is a model of the real world of the business, not the data used by business systems. Additionally, the concept model provides the vocabulary for process models that describe the way the business is run. The concept model is created by capturing the business knowledge of business experts. It is understood by business experts and validated by business experts.
Data models, defining the definition and structure of data used by a system, can be built or generated by "subsetting" a concept model. The concept model becomes the "Rosetta Stone" for enterprise level semantic integration, e.g., automatically generating data transformations between systems within the enterprise described by the concept model.