Some Typical Business Systems
Although every large company has its own unique business model, the mechanics of day-to-day operations are fairly uniform. Every large company must deal with employees, financial reporting, legal compliance, project management, and a host of other mundane but critical business functions. The following sections give some examples of back-office systems that support basic business activities.
Human Resources
Between recruiting, professional development, benefits administration, and government compliance, corporate HR departments have significant data-processing requirements. Frequently, paper-based files are used to track various events in an employee's career, making the task of collecting aggregate information difficult. Although the utopian vision of a paperless office is still a very long way off, XML is definitely a step in the right direction.
The highly personal nature of information in HR systems dictates that access be strictly limited. A benefits administrator doesn't need access to an employee's stock option grant information. The payroll department doesn't need access to his performance reviews.
Storing information in XML and applying strategic transformations can help ensure that information is made available on a “need-to-know” basis. For instance, all employee files could be made available on an internal Web server. Different departments are limited by server-side transformations to see only the data that is relevant to the task at hand.
▸See the Web Content Publishing project (Chapter 12) for an example of a system like this.
Personnel Files
A typical employee's personnel file can contain large quantities of disparate information. Types of information located in a personnel file might include the following:
Compensation information
Personal contact information
Performance reviews
Benefits usage
Many companies use specialized vertical applications for tracking personnel information. By requesting that vendors implement XML for data import and export, you can help ensure that your critical information will be easily accessible in the future. One of the greatest features of XML is its self-documenting nature. Unlike binary file formats, XML makes the relationships between data elements explicit through the use of text-based tags. An XML document written today will be just as valid and easy to understand 20 years from now (although the actual physical media it is stored on may be obsolete by that time).
Corporate Directory
Maintaining contact information within a large organization is a full-time job. New employees are being added. Existing employees move. Keeping track of physical addresses, mail stops, telephone numbers, e-mail address, network connections, and so on is problematic. The need for rapid access to this information precludes storing and accessing this type of information directly in XML. However, for updating, storing offline, and transmitting directory information, XML is a natural choice.
Currently, technologies such as LDAP are used to integrate contact information with groupware applications (such as Microsoft Exchange, Novell GroupWise, and so on). XML can be used to bridge the gap between the online version of this information and Web and print media.
▸See the Unifying Product Documentation project (Chapter 18) for an example of a system like this.