Industry participant role definition

Clearly defined roles allow participants to develop their systems with the knowledge that they can interwork with all other participants. Indefine bases its practice upon clear and precise definition of the roles within a market. These are achieved through analogy with other industries and logical analysis of the industry objectives as proposed by the regulatory body.

Analysis of the business processes of potential market participants and the existing processes within incumbent participants give a starting position for the de-regulated processes that are likely to be required. These are refined by workshops with participants and role-play walkthroughs. The timing of the logical interaction of market participants is also determined.

Any misunderstanding of the logical competition model has the potential to result in failure, which may manifest itself in excess costs and new entrants being unable to penetrate the market to any significant extent. Thus special emphasis is given to the industry agreement to the process model, before proceeding further.

The underlying logical data model for the industry is proposed. Refinement of the entities and their relationships continues through workshops, until a level of stability is achieved.

At this point, effort is fed into the development of the industry data dictionary. Every data item that is to be used between market participants is defined, circulated, and re-defined until a caucus of agreement is achieved.

In order for competition to exist, new entrants must be able to communicate efficiently with incumbent players. The ability to substitute service providers requires that data flows be provided in a common format.

Indefine uses the industry processes and the logical data modelling activities to create an inventory of logical data flows. These are then realised in physical formats that can be specified for implementation.