In 2023, visionary leaders are at the forefront of reshaping the future in a rapidly evolving economic landscape. Embracing innovation, sustainability, and digitization, these creative minds are guiding their organizations and industries through uncharted territory. They are adept at adapting to changing consumer preferences, emerging technologies, and global challenges.
This article explores how these forward-looking corporate leaders are not only shaping the future but also navigating the complexities of today’s competitive business landscape. In doing so, they are establishing new benchmarks for success.
Please provide us with an overview of your journey with the company and what motivated you to establish it.
I am the CEO and founder of Global Data Excellence, recognized internationally for my expertise in AI and data-related fields, with over three decades of practical experience spanning various industries. As a French linguist and computer scientist, I introduced the Semantic Meta Model (SMM), aimed at bridging the communication gap between humans and machines.
My multicultural background led me to recognize the significant challenge in human-machine communication, particularly concerning languages. This realization drove me to delve into both human and machine languages to facilitate effective dialogue. Upon entering the corporate arena, I observed that value, a central concept, possessed dual qualitative and quantitative interpretations, often leading to ambiguity.
To address this, I envisioned a governance system capable of navigating both dimensions of value. The first phase emphasizes rights, ethics, standards, rules, and regulations, while the second phase pertains to monetary value. However, humans often struggle to connect rules, data, and value, resulting in a loss of meaning at various levels.
To mitigate this ambiguity, I sought to integrate these elements into a governance framework that reflects individual language and context, employing verbatim to eliminate ambiguity. Only AI, with its capacity for neutral context calculation and anticipation, can navigate the disparate nature of data and resolve this paradox.
Traditional AIs fail to account for value or context, relying on historical data and past transactions that hold little relevance for the future. To pave the way for the future, we must harness linguistic and semantic AI to create it.
What were some of the initial challenges that you faced?
The initial challenges we faced revolved around the complexity of navigating the digital world and its interactions, particularly concerning data governance for the Digital Enterprise. The fragmentation and dispersion of knowledge across systems, compounded by issues like normalization, siloing, and inconsistency, made it challenging for humans and machines to interact effectively. Additionally, the language barriers within organizational ecosystems, coupled with the overwhelming volume of regulations and data, hindered the ability to connect knowledge and utilize it optimally for organizational value.
While numerous platforms and solutions exist, many of them overlook the importance of integrating knowledge and human wisdom, thus failing to address social contexts adequately. Examples include Big Data Analytics, IBM Watson, and Palantir, which, although proficient in providing insights and predictions, lack the ability to facilitate transparent human-machine dialogue. In today’s rapidly evolving and intricate environments, a comprehensive, systematic, and prescriptive data-driven governance approach is essential for executing business strategies and generating value proactively.
Through our solution, GDE (Global Data Excellence), we have effectively tackled organizational complexity and cost issues while accelerating value creation. By eliminating siloed decision-making and instinctive actions, we have minimized losses in terms of money, time, and trust. The integration of semantics within DEMS-NIXUS ensures seamless communication without loss of translation. Furthermore, our approach guarantees privacy, as data remain at their respective sources while upholding principles of ownership, ethics, and human rights.
What are the primary products or services the company specializes in, and how do they differ from those available in the market?
Our flagship offering, the Data Excellence Management System – Natural Intelligence eXpanded Universe System (DEMS-NIXUS), is a comprehensive web-based solution designed to empower modern organizations with cohesive governance capabilities across all business units. DEMS-NIXUS incorporates semantic and linguistic Artificial Intelligence (AI) to seamlessly translate human language business rules into machine code.
This AI integration facilitates instant alignment with existing infrastructure and databases without manual intervention while respecting data ownership and leaving them at their source. Notably, DEMS-NIXUS boasts multilingual support for natural language database interrogation. It integrates linguistics and incorporates advanced AI tools like ChatGPT and Wolfram ALPHA, and is adept at processing and decrypting over 1000 file formats while connecting to any public or private data source and social networks.
DEMS-NIXUS serves as a comprehensive solution for automated Data Integration, Data Cleansing, Business Intelligence, Data Governance, and Data Sharing. By consolidating resources and leveraging existing investments, it fosters value-driven collaboration across all organizational levels, engaging end-users in value creation.
As a web-based application, DEMS-NIXUS supports customizable management and governance frameworks, promoting accountability and responsibility throughout the organizational hierarchy. By precisely linking data assets to value flows, it enables prescriptive governance of business strategies. Ultimately, DEMS-NIXUS delivers a synchronized environment for data, policies, and business transactions, enhancing operational efficiency and strategic decision-making.
Furthermore, DEMS-NIXUS incorporates DeCRIPT, a tool for analyzing textual data (including private or public data such as emails and social networks) based on semantic meta-models. This capability addresses the significant untapped potential of textual data, representing approximately 80% of a company’s data that is not automatically exploited compared to the structured data in databases, which constitutes the remaining 20%.
The insights derived from the texts serve to enhance existing structured data, providing a more current perspective automatically. The outcome of this analysis enriches the database’s meaning and is stored within it. Subsequently, this outcome can be queried using natural language.
The implementation of DEMS-NIXUS expedites your organization’s ability to maximize the business value of enterprise data while minimizing operational costs. Within a span of less than one year, your teams can instill a “govern by value” culture throughout the organization.
The uniqueness of DEMS-NIXUS lies in its Dynamic and Prescriptive Governance Model: a management approach that prioritizes the systematic valuation of enterprise data assets and proactive control over current and projected business transactions and goals.
This model empowers leaders and managers to foresee the ramifications of non-compliant data assets on overall business value, allowing them to reallocate resources effectively to optimize ongoing and planned business operations.
Ultimately, DEMS-NIXUS enables business executives to anticipate the consequences of deviating from business policies and their impact on business value. It enables the company to maintain a laser focus on objectives and the most efficient path to achieving them.
How do you determine the next steps for advancing the company?
To propel our company forward, we actively engage with a comprehensive ecosystem comprising customers, partners, institutions, academies, and consortia such as the European Commission, ECCMA, INTERREG, and INNOSUISSE. Our approach involves continuous research and development (R&D) efforts, as well as undertaking various specialized projects to stay abreast of evolving trends and adapt to changing times.
Please provide a brief overview of your professional background.
Dr. Walid Abed, born on September 20, 1968, is recognized as a French linguist and computer scientist who introduced the Semantic Meta Model (SMM) (Meta Modèle Sémantique – MMS). As the founder and CEO of Global Data Excellence, he boasts a reputation as a global authority and innovator in AI and data-related domains, backed by 30 years of practical experience spanning various industries.
He commenced his career in 1995 within the automotive sector before transitioning to the IT industry in 1998, followed by roles in financial and business consulting from 2001 onwards. Dr. Abed’s professional journey led him to assume pivotal roles, including Business Excellence Manager at Nestlé headquarters, where he spearheaded the group’s data strategy initiatives.
In 1996, he pioneered Nixus (Natural Intelligence eXpanded Universe System), marking the inception of human-computer dialogue in natural language when such concepts were nascent. Dr. Abed has been instrumental in advocating and teaching the principles of Data Excellence since 2000, imparting knowledge at esteemed institutions such as the Tesnière Centre at the University of Franche-Comté, CNAM (Centre National des Arts et Métiers), Paris Dauphine University, and Fribourg University of Law, where he contributed to philosophical, economic, political, and organizational discourse.
In 2007, Walid Abed established Global Data Excellence (GDE), a Swiss ICT company headquartered in Geneva. Global Data Excellence’s sustainable business philosophy revolves around a novel discipline known as governance by value, which fosters perpetual excellence. This innovative approach is facilitated by a comprehensive framework integrated into a software system called DEMS (Data Excellence Management System), with the overarching goal of elevating data to excellence and enabling a value-driven society.
Dr. Walid Abed has delivered lectures at numerous data conferences and serves as a co-founder and board member of the French association EXQI (Excellence, Quality, Information), which brings together multiple scientists dedicated to the Data Excellence discipline. Additionally, Walid Abed contributes to the establishment of the IQCP (Information Quality Certified Professional) certification by the IAIDQ (International Association for Information and Data Quality). He is also the founder of the Scientific Society PEC (Perpetual Excellence Community), a Swiss non-profit organization headquartered in Geneva. Furthermore, Walid Abed has authored several articles and book chapters on relevant subjects.
What significant milestones have you achieved in your business journey?
Our journey has seen us serving the most esteemed corporations globally, with over 30,000 users and 3,000 managers and leaders worldwide actively engaging with DEMS for continuous excellence. Operating across 50+ countries and spanning diverse industries such as Manufacturing, Oil and Gas, Consumer Goods, Pharmaceuticals, and Finance, we have facilitated a turnover of €8 trillion for our clients. Moreover, DEMS has effectively cleansed approximately €100K million, a small fraction of the world economy, yet significant in its potential to alleviate poverty and align with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Additionally, we have developed 10 out-of-the-box semantic knowledge models and verbatim packages tailored for various domains, including ERP, HR, Person, Procurement, GDPR, CORPORATE DATA MODEL, and SAP Master Data Model.
