Introduction to Business Taxonomies
November 5, 2010, 11:30-12:30 ET
Joseph A. Busch, Senior Principal
Zach Wahl, Director Information Management
Agenda
• What is a Taxonomy & Why is it Important?
• Business Taxonomy vs. Traditional Taxonomy
• Approaches to Getting Started
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What is a Taxonomy?
• Overall scheme for organizing content to solve a business
problem:
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–
–
–
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Improve search
Browse for content on an enterprise-wide portal
Enable business users to syndicate content
Provide the basis for content re-use
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Why is Taxonomy Important?
• E-Commerce
– Merchandising, cross-selling, up-selling
• Publishing (public & internal)
– Aggregation, syndication, RSS feeds, alerts
• Regulated industries & government agencies
– Compliance, transparency
– Business rules
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Merchandising: A case study (2005)
Redesigned site architecture, + Taxonomy
search engine
Faceted searching & shopping
• Conversion rate for product findability
– $80M web sales net income
– 10% conversion rate increase
$8M per year
• Lift in order size from satisfaction
– $80M web sales net income
– 20% lift in sales
$8M per year
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Publishing: Aggregation, RSS feeds, Alerts
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Compliance, Transparency:
Keeping the Metadata with the Data
• IMF time series
– World Economic Outlook (WEO) in October 2009: Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries includes Angola (which joined OPEC in
January 2007) and Ecuador (which rejoined in November 2007, after
suspending its membership from December 1992 to October 2007)
– WEO in October 2006: OPEC does not include Angola & Ecuador
Attribute
Value
Group
OPEC
Period
Aug 2009
MBD
Reduction
2.8
Information Collaboration:
Taxonomy Business Rules
• Taxonomies can do more than sell vacations, cars & cruises
• Taxonomies can help us decipher complex issues:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Help citizens select health insurance policies
Help parents find advice on dealing with underage drinking
Help high school juniors find colleges with particular programs
Help pharmacists find generic drugs to substitute for brand names
Help nurses identify side effects of medication or medical devices
Help telephone sales reps correctly describe packaged products
Help procurement professionals purchase computer equipment
Help managers share better management practices
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• What is a Taxonomy & Why is it Important?
• Business Taxonomy v. Traditional Taxonomy
• Approaches to Getting Started
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Explaining Traditional Taxonomies
• Biological/medical/ library
science taxonomies
• “Instantive” categorization
approach
– An overall organizational system
– Defined by “is a” relationships—
with many branches or subeach child category is an instance
branches that organizes their world
of the parent category
of information
– “Pure” taxonomic approach
– Extremely rigid approach
• Purely subject-oriented
• Consistent & methodical
• Every item has one & only one Kingdom Animalia
Phylum
 Chordata
correct categorization
Class
 Reptilia
Order
 Squamata
Family  Colubridae
Genus  Pituophis
Species  Catenifer
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Defining the Business Taxonomy
• Categorization structure designed
by & for business users
– Business users as primary
taggers/content contributors
– Business users (or their
constituents) as primary
consumers
• Used for both (or either) primary
or secondary categorization:
– Primary: Navigation, management
– Secondary: Search, tagging
• Tend to be less rigid &
constrained
• Influenced by usability concerns
– Minimize number of “clicks”
• Often content-driven
– Ensure balanced content
distribution
• Allow flexibility, redundancy
– Items may be organized into
multiple categories
– May support multiple taxonomies
for disparate audiences
• May use one or more different
categorization approaches
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Traditional v. Business Taxonomy:
Side-by-Side Comparison
Traditional Taxonomy
•
•
•
•
Back-end visibility
Integration & classification
Absolute granularity
Ultimate classification
Business Taxonomy
•
•
•
•
Front-end visibility/navigation structure
Navigation & integration/classification
Increased usability
Simplicity
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• What is a Taxonomy & Why is it Important?
• Business Taxonomy v. Traditional Taxonomy
• Approaches to Getting Started
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Taxonomy Development Methods
Method
Automated
analysis
Description
Munge, blast, & crunch text to analyze
corpus
Guide group in activities to identify key
Workshopping
concepts
Prepare best guess, then bring it to the
Strawman
table to discuss
Adapt existing Customize internal terminology, industry
vocabularies
standards, etc.
Combination of some or all of these
Hybrid
methods
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What Do You Need to Get Started?
• Understand your audience
• Understand your publishers/
content managers
• Understand your technology
platform
• Understand your content
– How much content?
– How it is tagged?
Taxonomy design projects
seldom do (and never should)
exist in a vacuum. Unless the
project managers & designers
recognize & adapt to the project
constraints, the project is
doomed to failure or obscurity.
• Understand the scope of the
project
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Understand Your Limitations
• Many, if not most, taxonomy
projects fit within the context
of a large project & are driven
by artificial limitations:
– Schedule
– Budget
– Personnel
Relax: you’re not alone. Few
taxonomy design projects are
perfectly resourced & funded.
The most important thing is to
start the process. Recognize
you can make do with given
resources as long as you begin
the process correctly & build
from there.
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Define Your Use Cases
• Understand how/why you will be using taxonomy & metadata
• Define who your content managers are in order to understand
their capabilities:
– Willingness to manually enter fields
– Ability to properly tag content
• Define your audience to understand their needs:
– Sorting needs
• Communicate benefits to all users
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Key Components to a Successful Taxonomy Project:
Project Best Practices
• Incremental, extensible process that identifies & enables users,
& engages stakeholders
• Keep your audience in mind
• Strive for subject-based categorization
• Be consistent
• Control depth & breadth
• Make a long-term investment
• A means to an end & not the end in itself
• Not perfect, but it does the job it is supposed to do—such as
improving search & navigation
• Improved over time & maintained
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Questions?
Joseph A. Busch, + 703-748-7215, jbusch@ppc.com
Zach Wahl, +703-748-7082, zwahl@ppc.com
http://www.ppc.com
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ASIST Taxonomy Webinar Series
• Introduction to Business Taxonomies
– November 5th 11:30am-12:30pm EST
– Joseph Busch and Zach Wahl
• Taxonomy Workshops
– November 8th 11:30am-12:30pm EST
– Rachel Sondag and Jill Tabuchi
• Practical Taxonomy Design
– November 10th 11:30am-12:30pm EST
– Jill Tabuchi and Joseph Busch
• Taxonomy Governance & Maintenance
– November 12th 11:30am-12:30pm EST
– Nick Nylund and Joseph Busch
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Summary
• This session provided an introduction to what a taxonomy is, the
value it offers your business, and the various approaches to
getting started designing effective taxonomies for your own
organization.
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