Corporate taxonomy
Encyclopedia
Corporate taxonomy is the hierarchical classification of entities of interest of an enterprise, organization or administration, used to classify documents, digital assets and other information. Taxonomies can cover virtually any type of physical or conceptual entities (products, processes, knowledge fields, human groups, etc.) at any level of granularity
.
Corporate taxonomies are increasingly used in information systems
(particularly content management
and knowledge management
systems), as a way to allow instant access to the right information within exponentially growing volumes of data in learning organizations. Relatively simple systems based on semantic networks and taxonomies proved to be a serious competitor to heavy data mining
systems and behavior analysis software in contextual filtering applications used for routing customer requests, "pushing" content on a Web site or delivering product advertising in a targeted and pertinent way.
A powerful approach to map and retrieve unstructured data, taxonomies allow efficient solutions in the management of corporate knowledge, in particular in complex organizational models for workflows, human resources
or customer relations.
As an extension of traditional thesauri and classifications used in a company, a corporate taxonomy is usually the fruit of a large harmonization effort involving most departments of the organization. It is often developed, deployed and fine tuned over the years, while setting up knowledge management
systems, in order to assure the survival and good use of valuable corporate know-how.
Enterprises have varying interest in the usage of taxonomies, from the usual enterprise information searches to the direct business benefits of taxonomies benefiting quicker and more accurate searches for the merchandise or the services of e-commerce or e-library sites. Such organisations may need to build large and complex vocabularies and deal with information assets that are largely in the public domain. Consequently, they are looking to shortcut their metadata schema development and avoid reinventing the wheel. Such shortcuts include the licensing of ready-built taxonomies and vocabularies with which to enhance their search results quickly.
Granularity
Granularity is the extent to which a system is broken down into small parts, either the system itself or its description or observation. It is the "extent to which a larger entity is subdivided...
.
Corporate taxonomies are increasingly used in information systems
Information systems
Information Systems is an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study...
(particularly content management
Content management
Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content...
and knowledge management
Knowledge management
Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...
systems), as a way to allow instant access to the right information within exponentially growing volumes of data in learning organizations. Relatively simple systems based on semantic networks and taxonomies proved to be a serious competitor to heavy data mining
Data mining
Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
systems and behavior analysis software in contextual filtering applications used for routing customer requests, "pushing" content on a Web site or delivering product advertising in a targeted and pertinent way.
A powerful approach to map and retrieve unstructured data, taxonomies allow efficient solutions in the management of corporate knowledge, in particular in complex organizational models for workflows, human resources
Human resources
Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...
or customer relations.
As an extension of traditional thesauri and classifications used in a company, a corporate taxonomy is usually the fruit of a large harmonization effort involving most departments of the organization. It is often developed, deployed and fine tuned over the years, while setting up knowledge management
Knowledge management
Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...
systems, in order to assure the survival and good use of valuable corporate know-how.
Enterprises have varying interest in the usage of taxonomies, from the usual enterprise information searches to the direct business benefits of taxonomies benefiting quicker and more accurate searches for the merchandise or the services of e-commerce or e-library sites. Such organisations may need to build large and complex vocabularies and deal with information assets that are largely in the public domain. Consequently, they are looking to shortcut their metadata schema development and avoid reinventing the wheel. Such shortcuts include the licensing of ready-built taxonomies and vocabularies with which to enhance their search results quickly.
External links
- Taxonomy Strategies - Bibliography of resources. Most of the items selected are written for a general business audience, or are a basic primer on the particular topic.