Information Content Management Best Practices: Taxonomies In Action

Taxonomies are a hot topic among IT and information management (IM) practitioners. Faced with an ever-growing challenge to provide successful search and retrieval across increasingly huge repositories of diverse content, many organizations are looking for ways to create order out of chaos, and taxonomies are a primary tool. IT organizations are starting to embrace taxonomies as vendors push products with taxonomy capabilities, but they lack the skill set that IM professionals bring to the table. This Briefing, based on Outsell's benchmark data and in-depth interviews with IM professionals at nine companies, examines the drivers of taxonomy development, key trends, and the best practices of several leading organizations. It takes a detailed look at two companies, DuPont and Sun Microsystems. The Briefing identifies several critical success factors, including good outward-facing relationships, internal teamwork, leverage and re-use of work, and understanding of user needs and drivers. It also highlights the primary importance of the symbiosis between IM and IT. For information management professionals, this Briefing presents an opportunity to learn from leading organizations already well on the way to successfully implementing taxonomies.