Introduction to Business TaxonomiesNovember 5, 2010, 11:30-12:30 ET

Joseph A. Busch, Senior PrincipalZach 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:– 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)

• 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

Faceted searching & shoppingRedesigned site architecture, search engine

+ Taxonomy

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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

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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– An overall organizational system

with many branches or sub-branches that organizes their world of information

– Extremely rigid approach• Purely subject-oriented• Consistent & methodical• Every item has one & only one

correct categorization

• “Instantive” categorization approach– Defined by “is a” relationships—

each child category is an instance of the parent category

– “Pure” taxonomic approach

Kingdom Animalia

Phylum Chordata

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 DescriptionAutomated analysis

Munge, blast, & crunch text to analyze corpus

Workshopping Guide group in activities to identify key concepts

Strawman Prepare best guess, then bring it to the table to discuss

Adapt existing vocabularies

Customize internal terminology, industry standards, etc.

Hybrid Combination of some or all of these 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?

• Understand the scope of the project

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.

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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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