Business Data Standard · 0.1
A business vocabulary on top of schema.org
Every BDS type is a subclass of a schema.org type. The words a company already uses, like bds:Process and bds:Membership, get one agreed meaning here.
One name means one thing. Search before you add a term: if it exists here, reuse it; if schema.org has it, use theirs.
- 24
- Types
- 12
- Enumerations
- 69
- Values
- 81
- Properties
- 12
- Widened
Organization
5 types
- bds:BusinessUnitA part of an organization that has its own people and purpose, such as a division, a Department or a Team. Use schema:parentOrganization to place a unit inside a larger unit or company, and head to name who leads it.
- bds:DepartmentA BusinessUnit organized around a function, such as Sales, Finance or Engineering.
- bds:MembershipThe fact that a schema:Person belongs to an organization or BusinessUnit in some Position for some period. Most facts about a person at work (their manager, their status, their start date) live on the Membership, not on the Person, because one person can hold several.
- bds:PositionA seat in the organization chart, such as "Head of Sales", independent of the person who currently fills it. A Membership connects a schema:Person to a Position. Compare schema:Occupation, which describes a kind of job in general, and schema:JobPosting, which advertises an open one.
- bds:TeamA small BusinessUnit of people who work together day to day, usually inside a Department.
Operations
6 types
- bds:AssetA physical or licensed thing the business owns or controls, such as equipment, a vehicle, or a software license. Use schema:purchaseDate, schema:itemCondition and cost. For software the business runs on, prefer Tool.
- bds:AutomationA Process that software performs without a person, fired by a trigger and running on a Tool (see runsOn).
- bds:PolicyA stated commitment about how the business behaves, such as "Refunds are honored within 30 days". A Policy says what; a Rule says exactly when and what happens. Use schema:validFrom and schema:validThrough for the period it applies and reviewDate for when it should next be looked at.
- bds:ProcessA repeatable way the business gets a piece of work done, such as "Monthly invoicing" or "New-hire onboarding". A Process has an schema:owner, a cadence or trigger, steps (via schema:step), the Tools it usesTool, the Policy it is governedBy, and the Metrics it is measuredBy. Because it is a schema:HowTo, the same record can be published as a readable procedure.
- bds:RuleA Policy precise enough to check: if the condition holds, the consequence follows. Rules can be enforced by people or by an Automation.
- bds:ToolA piece of software or a service the business runs on, such as a CRM subscription, an internal app, or a payment provider. A Tool has a schema:provider (the vendor), an schema:owner inside the business, a cost with a billing cadence, and the Processes it supportsProcess.
Work
4 types
- bds:DecisionA record of a choice the business made: what was decided, by whom (decidedBy), when (decisionDate), why (rationale) and what else was considered (alternative). Decisions are often made in a Meeting and can later be replaced via supersedes.
- bds:GoalAn outcome the business or a BusinessUnit is trying to reach in a period, such as an objective in an OKR. Goals nest via parentGoal and are made measurable by one or more keyResults, each a MetricTarget.
- bds:MilestoneA named point a project or Goal aims to reach by a targetDate, such as "Beta launched". Record when it actually happened with achievedDate.
- bds:TaskA unit of work that someone is expected to do. A Task has an assignee, a dueDate, a priority and a status expressed with schema:actionStatus. Tasks can nest via parentTask and subtask, depend on each other via blockedBy, and belong to a project. Because Task is a schema:Action, schema:object can name what the task is about and schema:result what it produced.
Commercial
3 types
- bds:AgreementA contract or other binding arrangement between two or more party entries, such as a customer contract, a vendor agreement, an NDA or a lease (see agreementType). Use schema:validFrom and schema:validThrough for the term, signedDate, contractValue, renewalTerms and autoRenews.
- bds:BusinessRelationshipThe relationship between an organization (subjectOrganization) and another party (counterparty): customer, prospect, vendor, partner, investor and so on, as given by relationshipType. One company can be a customer in one relationship and a vendor in another, which is why this is a record of its own rather than a label on the company.
- bds:DealA potential sale or agreement being pursued with a counterparty, often called an opportunity. Track its dealStage in the pipeline, its dealValue, the probability of closing, the expectedCloseDate and the final dealStatus.
Measurement
2 types
- bds:MetricThe definition of something the business measures repeatedly, such as "Monthly recurring revenue" or "Support tickets closed per week": its formula, its schema:unitText, which direction counts as good, how often it is read (cadence), where the numbers come from (dataSource) and what it measures. Individual readings are schema:Observation records whose schema:variableMeasured is the Metric; targets are MetricTarget records.
- bds:MetricTargetA value a Metric should reach in a period, such as "MRR of 50,000 by end of Q3". Used as the keyResult of a Goal.
Risk and compliance
3 types
- bds:ComplianceRequirementAn obligation the business must meet, such as a filing, a license renewal or a training, coming from a law, a regulator or a contract (requirementSource). Track schema:jurisdiction, cadence, dueDate, complianceStatus and the evidence that it was met.
- bds:IncidentSomething that did go wrong: an outage, a breach, an injury, a failed delivery. Record its severity, what it affects, the rootCause and the postmortem. Start and end use schema:startDate and schema:endDate.
- bds:RiskSomething that could go wrong for the business, rated by likelihood and impact, with an schema:owner and a mitigation.
Enumerations
Closed value sets. A value means one thing, so check here before adding one.