Making content work through metadata
by Evan Goris, on Mar 26, 2014 1:47:59 PM
Creating useful information from an enterprise’s big pile of unstructured data. How to make content work for an organization's users through metadata.
If you cannot explain the purpose of a page, it does not belong on your website. Ecommerce has embraced this principle long ago with its obsessive focus on conversion optimization. But the mantra also holds true for websites without commercial goals. And in enterprise contexts. Any information an organization provides should be useful to whatever its audience: customers, prospects, employees, stakeholders, etc. Gerry McGovern can tell you all about it.
Document clutter
Publishing only to please internal stakeholders (communications departments' propaganda) or as a means of archiving ("at least we've saved it somewhere") are not accepted purposes. A SharePoint project site cluttered with several versions of many, many document types does not constitute a useful project collaboration space.
Data unequals information
Put more generally: a big pile of data does not imply useful information. High-quality, task-focused enterprise information can facilitate innovation, collaboration, and compliance. But if organizations want to achieve these goals, they need to clean up the mess, link the content to user tasks, and ensure content retains its quality over time.
Correct, up-to-date metadata
An important aspect of effective enterprise information is providing the right version of the right document to the right person at the right time. Easier said than done, but it is achievable. What is the most important ingredient of the recipe? Metadata. Correct and up-to-date metadata enables findability and collaboration, and prevents potentially expensive errors.
Making the content work
We can help you turn that big pile of data into a smaller set of highly useful information. By deduplicating the information and efficiently adding metadata, making the content work for everyone.
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