The clustering of information objects seeks to define information services that show coherence through object relationships and through interaction between business activity and information. This is a first step in designing information services without taking any physical restrictions or limitations into account. It may well be that information objects belong to more than one information cluster. The notion of how to resolve the issue synchronising duplicate information is not addressed in this activity. In so called Service Oriented architectures this is the area where services should be defined and designed. The information model is the place to make the transition from business process orientation to application orientation. The design criteria for defining services can vary between engagements. A focus often found is to enable process flexibility, i.e. to allow different business process configurations using the same basic application landscape support, i.e. where changes the business process has limited or minimal impact on the supporting applications. Another focus may be to run different process configurations using the same application landscape. An example is a retailer that wants to run a mixed franchise and own-store operation using a single set of applications.