Services: Taxonomy Maintenance and Management Services

  Business Context

The most demanding, and in the long run most expensive part of a taxonomy-enabled intranet program is the ongoing maintenance, management, and improvement of the taxonomy. Enterprises need to be prepared for the fact that inevitable organizational and business changes, as well as deliberate decisions based on usage and user feedback, will require enterprise taxonomy updates.

  Typical Outcomes and Deliverables

SearchScience has created a rigorous and thorough taxonomy development methodology that can be applied in any organization. The maintenance, measurement, and improvement steps in this methodology cover the following outcomes and deliverables:

Step 1– Maintain encompasses the maintenance processes and procedures by which taxonomy terms and relationships are kept up to date. Metadata lifecycle management is also performed throughout this process. Key tasks include:

• Define taxonomy maintenance staff roles
• Set up appropriate security roles and permissions for performing maintenance tasks
• Create workflows and procedures for taxonomy maintenance
• Develop procedures for prioritizing taxonomy change requests
• Develop and utilize templates for content tagging and publication
• Develop automated procedures wherever practical for improving efficiency and accuracy of taxonomy maintenance

Step 2– Measure focuses on measuring and monitoring taxonomy utilization to track both usage (who uses the taxonomy, how, and in what volumes) and impact (how taxonomy use affects sales, profits, productivity, customer relationships, innovation, and other measures of business value). High-level activities include:

• Develop metrics for measuring taxonomy usage, effectiveness, and impact
• Create taxonomy dashboard for tracking performance
• Track usage, focusing on volume, user demographics, and demonstrated impact on key business objectives such as sales, profits, productivity, customer relations and innovation.

Finally, Step 3– Improve captures the improvement and refinement cycle built into the taxonomy maintenance lifecycle. Improvement opportunities are identified based on monitoring and metrics, tested with users, validated technically, and deployed. This involves the following activities:

• Identify taxonomy improvement opportunities
• Use taxonomy governance mechanisms to prioritize and sequence improvement requests from users and content owners
• Regularly prune unused taxonomy categories
• Refine taxonomy content as required
• Design and test interface impacts of all planned improvements
• Validate improvements with users, content owners, and sponsors
• Deploy improvements with appropriate communications and training, as required

  Client Sponsorship and Participation Required

Sponsorship and management support are critical throughout the lifecycle of an enterprise taxonomy and taxonomy-enabled intranet, but most critical during the maintenance and management phases. A strong governance mechanism and process should be put in place to oversee ongoing maintenance of the taxonomy, in order to ensure that the taxonomy continues to deliver business value and reflects changes in the business and organization.

  SearchScience Expertise and Qualifications

SearchScience can provide full or partial outsourcing of routine taxonomy maintenance and management activities, as well as measurement and improvement project work. In addition, we can leverage our experience to help you set up and launch your own in-house maintenance and management processes and organization.

  Timeframes

Taxonomy maintenance and management is an ongoing process that should be revisited and adjusted at least annually. Setting up a new taxonomy maintenance organization, including defining processes and training personnel, usually requires 4-8 weeks of concentrated effort.