Structured Operations Description is an operations modeling technique that allows you to describe your operations using a set of interrelated elements such as objectives, jobs, processes and tools, ensuring content consistency and traceability

When you manage information about a specific domain, you can take two approaches:

• A narrative style (like in a novel)
• Structured data

In metoCube operations are described in a structured way, as opposed to the narrative style used when procedures, job descriptions, user manuals, etc... are documented in MS Word, PDF or static HTML. This structured operations description makes it possible to generate views (more about metoCube views) that filter content.

Data is organised in semantic chunks called "Elements" of a specific type that has a set of predefined fields. For example, "Register an incident" is an element of type "Work". For elements of type "Work", "Responsible role", "Inputs" and "Outputs" fields have been defined.

metoCube content structure is based on Structured Operations MOdeling Framework (Simple Operations MOdelling Framework). SOMoF states that processes are best described using a fixed set of interrelated elements (work, roles, indicators, persons, etc...)

Note: The diagram needs to be updated

This is an example of a procedure document describing a task (Guest registration in a hotel) in a narrative way:

If you look at the text above, you can easily identify several SOMoF elements:

• The responsible role (Check in clerk)
• An object used used as input (Available rooms report)
• An object produced output (Stay record)
• An object used as an input (Due customer identification laws)

If you use the traditional narrative style the only thing you can do with this information is read it.

If you describe your processes in metoCube, you can exploit this information in several ways, as the information about the elements, their descriptions and the relations between them is stored in a database. Data is highly interconnected, so queries can be made to respond questions such as "Tell me which persons fill a job that assumes the role that is responsible for this task". This kind of "data mining" is carried out using metoCube views (see this video to understand how this data mining works, in this case with freebase).

Imagine a CRM system in which data about an account was expresed in a narrative style (IE, "The Blah Blah Bank has three contacts: Mary Steven (tlf +349876543), Joe Smith (tlf +3498766789). They have bought an X Product license on the 5th July..." Strange... isn't it? Then, why describe your operations this way?

Structured operations description is an application of the more general structured data approach to the operations modeling domain. Some examples of other products or services that have taken a structured data approach for managing information of different domains are IMDB (movies), foodpedia (receipes) or freebase (generic).