| The purpose of a business taxonomy is for website navigation and to facilitate "findability". A successful business taxonomy must be designed for intuitive browsing by end users. Design at every stage of the business taxonomy must, consider whether the average user will be able to understand both the terms and the hierarchy of the taxonomy and react to it in a meaningful and consistent manner. If this is done effectively, the end user will receive a powerful 'findability' tool, enabling them to discover information through browsing the taxonomy and view information in an intuitive and consistent manner.
The business taxonomy must be explained with simple terminology that avoids jargon or technical complexity that could confuse potential users. When considering the terms for a business taxonomy, the designers should identify the "lowest common denominator" of user types and build using terms and topics that will immediately resonate with them.
It is critical to have a cross-disciplinary team assisting in taxonomy creation. Every class of user type should be represented. This ensures that all types of users' needs will be considered in the construction of the taxonomy. This team can form the governance body for the taxonomy. The main point is to get user involvement and buy-in from the business so they have some ownership and don't write off enterprise search failure as an "IT thing".
Governance also helps decide where documents belong, and what classifications are appropriate. The author usually thinks he or she has a good idea of where the document belongs, but he or she may not understand how a user might go about looking for the document. Tools can be very helpful to decipher what documents are about.
Documents that are consistently being mis-categorised are signs of a faulty, confusing taxonomy. For this reason, the website's search metrics should be monitored periodically. If there are many abandoned searches, this could be an indicator that the taxonomy is hindering, not helping, the search process.
Are Most Searches Successful?
Here are some quick facts that IDC research found:
- The typical knowledge worker spends from 15-35% of their time searching
- 50% or less of all searches are successful
- Only 40% of survey respondents reported that they were able to find what they needed on their corporate intranet [Feldman, 2001]
It should be noted that the IDC study was conducted in 2001 and again in 2003. A more recent survey was conducted in 2005 by the Centre for Media Research and found the following:
- Average worker spends 30% of time spent on search
- Cost of $18,000 each year per employee in lost productivity
It can therefore be concluded that the ability to find information is not just a "nice to have" but it drastically affects the bottom line.
Conclusion
Business metadata plays a very important part in enabling enterprise search. Any descriptive information about files or data, which is in the language of the business, is business metadata. Therefore, the name of the file is a very key piece of business metadata, as is any classification scheme like a taxonomy.
Myriad Technologies can help you create a taxonomy that is right for your business. |