Building a corporate taxonomy: benefits and challenges

Description
Taxonomies are a fundamental part of any modern information architecture.
Any organisation that needs to make significant volumes of information
available in an efficient and consistent way to its customers, partners or
employees needs to understand the value of a serious approach to taxonomy
design and management.
However, many organisations are unfamiliar with taxonomy development and
management. At its simplest, a taxonomy is a hierarchical organisation of
categories used for classification purposes. Such a simple definition hides the
many challenges to be faced in building and maintaining an effective and
usable taxonomy for your organisation.
This report explains why taxonomies are a key issue for many organisations,
and looks at the benefits they bring and the challenges to be faced in
developing and maintaining a corporate taxonomy. It also examines the role of
categorisation tools in taxonomy design and maintenance, and looks at future
technology trends

The value of taxonomies
Why taxonomies are important today
The rise of the Web
The growing use of unstructured information management
technologies
Taxonomies are not part of the usual technology hype
The benefits of developing a taxonomy
Easier navigation, more efficient search
Improved information sharing
A better user experience
Support for interoperability and integration
What is a corporate taxonomy?
Building a corporate taxonomy - The preliminaries - Roles and responsibilities
The evolving role of software: beyond categorisation