Dr. Walid el Abed is a French linguist and computer scientist and is known for the proposition of a new model called the Semantic Meta Model (SMM) (Meta Modèle Sémantique – MMS). He was born on September 20, 1968. He is the founder and CEO of Global Data Excellence. He is a worldwide renowned expert and visionary in AI and data-related topics, with 30 years of on-field experience across various sectors.
He started his career in 1995 in the automotive industry before moving to the IT sector in 1998 and then to the financial and business consulting sector in 2001. After diverse missions for large financial, manufacturing enterprises, and governments, Dr. el Abed joined the food & beverage industry at Nestlé headquarters as a Business Excellence Manager driving the data strategy for the group.
In 1996, he created the first human-computer dialog in natural language: Nixus (Natural Intelligence eXpanded Universe System) when the idea of a dialog between humans and machines was in its infancy.
Since 2000, Dr. Walid el Abed has introduced and taught the Data Excellence discipline at the Tesnière Centre specializing in Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing at the University of Franche-Comté and also at the CNAM (Centre National des Arts et Métiers) and Paris Dauphine University, and finally at the Fribourg University of Law as a philosophical, economic, political and organizational model.
In 2007 he founded Global Data Excellence (GDE). GDE is a Swiss ICT company based in Geneva. The entire philosophy of the sustainable business of GDE relies on a new discipline, governance by value allowing perpetual excellence. This innovative discipline is made possible by a holistic framework embedded into a software system: DEMS (the Data Excellence Management System) with the vision to elevate data to excellence empowering a data-driven society governed by values/ or objectives.
Dr. Walid el Abed has given lectures at several data conferences. He is a co-founder and board member of the French association EXQI (Excellence, Quality, Information) which groups several scientists around the Data Excellence discipline. He is also one of the scientists involved in the creation of the IQCP (Information Quality Certified Professional) certification established by the IAIDQ (International Association for Information and Data Quality). Dr. Walid el Abed is the founder of the Scientific Society PEC “Perpetual Excellence Community”, a Swiss non-profit organization, based in Geneva. He has published several articles and book chapters.
In 2015 The Data Excellence Management System DEMS has been qualified as “an alternative future” by a Gartner analyst.
In December 2017, Global Data Excellence received an award from CIOReview magazine as 1 of the 20 promising enterprise information management solution providers for 2017. In July 2017, Information Management magazine listed DEMS as one of the 12 leading products for data governance stewardship.
In August 2019, Global Data Excellence received a €2 million grant from the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument. In October 2019, Dr. Walid el Abed was nominated to be part of EY (Ernst & Young) Entrepreneur of the Year 2019. In January 2020, Dr. Walid el Abed won the Special Innovation Award with DEMS at the World Innovation Economics in Davos. In December 2019, Global Data Excellence was on the cover of the Artificial Intelligence Edition issue of the CIOReview and was awarded as one of the 20 most promising artificial intelligence providers for 2019 and 2021.
In 2021, Dr. Walid el Abed joined the Association Mondiale des Droits de l’Homme Al AMDLAM as the General advisor and Ambassador for Human Rights.
In 2022, Dr. Walid el Abed co-founded UpEcos and is also the international chairman and Chief Scientist Officer of the company. He became a member of LIFE Lebanon as well.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The digital world and its complex interactions create new challenges for data governance, and more broadly, for the Digital Enterprise making it difficult for Humans and machines to interact. The knowledge required for human activity in value creation is fragmented and dispersed across systems which in their turn are not normalized, siloed, and inconsistent. Moreover, the language problem inherent to the organizational complexity of human and machine ecosystems, combined with the tsunami of regulation and data, makes it impossible to connect the knowledge together and link it to be used wisely for the organizational value outcome.
Many platforms and solutions exist. However, most of these, if not all, are disconnected from knowledge and human wisdom ignoring the social contexts as witnessed by Big Data Analytics, IBM Watson, Palantir, and other technologies in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). This type of AI (machine learning, analytics, and statistics-driven) enables us to understand approximately the world we created, and by extrapolation, it can project us with probabilistic predictions into potential futures, it does not enable a real constructive and transparent human-machine dialogue. In today’s complex and fast-changing environments, global, systematic, and prescriptive data-driven governance is now needed to execute and proactively operationalize business strategy execution and value generation.
Data Excellence Management System – Natural Intelligence eXpanded Universe System (DEMS-NIXUS) is an integrated and multilingual web-based solution (on-premise or in the cloud) that enables modern organizations to create a cohesive governance environment capable of aligning and governing all business units. DEMS-NIXUS embeds a semantic and linguistic Artificial Intelligence to translate human language business rules to machine code. The AI is capable of integrating the existing infrastructure and all databases and their senses instantly without human intervention while respecting the data ownership, leaving them at their source. It is a multilingual system for the interrogation of databases in natural language. DEMS-NIXUS integrates linguistics and encapsulates ChatGPT, Wolframe ALPHA, and other AI. It also processes and decrypts over 1000 file formats and connects to any public or private data source and social networks.
DEMS-Nixus is the complete solution that works in any IT environment for automated Data Integration, Data Cleansing, Business Intelligence, Data Governance, and Data Sharing. DEMS-NIXUS consolidates resources and builds on the extensive investments already made by companies. It also forces a factual value-driven collaboration that engages end users from all levels in the ultimate value creation.
This web-based application supports an integrated, customized management and governance framework empowering the enterprise’s shareholders, employees, and partners. It establishes accountability and responsibility throughout the organizational structure. DEMS-NIXUS precisely links the data asset to the value flows to prescriptively govern and sustain business strategies. Once fully deployed, DEMS-NIXUS provides the enterprise with the combined forces of a cohesive work structure and a governance framework that for the first time in history synchronizes data, policies, and business transactions.
Moreover, DEMS-NIXUS integrates decrypt which is used to analyze textual data (private or public data – emails, social networks, files…) according to business needs using the semantic meta-model. Textual data represents about 80% of the data of a company that is not automatically exploited compared to the 20% that represents structured data (in databases). The information obtained from the texts enriches the existing structured data to have a more updated vision in an automatic way. The result of this analysis can be used to enrich the meaning of a database and is stored in the database. Once in the database, this result can be queried in natural language.
The implementation of DEMS-NIXUS accelerates the ability of your organization to maximize the business value of enterprise data while minimizing your operational cost. Within less than one year, your teams are enabled to embed a “govern by value” culture across your organization.
The singularity of DEMS-NIXUS lies in its Dynamic and Prescriptive Governance Model: a top-down management approach driven by a systematic valorization of the enterprise data asset and proactive control of current and forecasted business transactions and objectives. This model enables leaders and managers to anticipate the impact of non-compliant data assets on the ultimate business value and in turn, to adjust the resources’ distribution to maximize current and planned business operations.
Ultimately, DEMS-NIXUS enables business executives to anticipate the impact of deviations from business policies and their impact on the business value. It allows the company to single-mindedly focus on the objectives to be reached and the most efficient journey to attain them.
