1 / 27

Making the Business Case for Taxonomy

Discover the value propositions, research insights, and example ROI scenarios for implementing taxonomy in business operations. Understand the benefits of taxonomy in improving efficiency, productivity, and revenue growth, while reducing costs and compliance risks.

lphilips
Download Presentation

Making the Business Case for Taxonomy

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Making the Business Case for Taxonomy Joseph A. Busch

  2. Agenda • Taxonomy value propositions • What the research says • Example ROI

  3. Taxonomy issues, problems, and concerns • Enormous volumes of information within organizations • Diversity of assets • Content and technology • Complex and IT-oriented standards • .NET, SOAP, WSDL, etc. • Limited (if any) integration with applications: • Search engines • Information management applications • Back office transaction-based systems • Analytical systems • …

  4. Fundamentals of taxonomy ROI • Tagging content using a taxonomy is a cost, not a benefit. • There is no benefit without exposing the tagged content to users in some way that cuts costs or improves revenues. • Putting taxonomy into operation requires UI changes and/or backend system changes, as well as data changes. • You need to determine those changes, and their costs, as part of the ROI.

  5. Finding information should not be about “Feeling Lucky”

  6. Finding information requires multiple approaches

  7. about 3,890,000 results

  8. 2,199 results

  9. Agenda • Taxonomy value propositions • What the research says • Example ROI

  10. Usability research— Taxonomy compared to search results lists • “We found that users preferred a browsing oriented interface for a browsing task, and a direct search interface when they knew precisely what they wanted.” Marti Hearst (and others) • “The category interface is superior to the list interface in both subjective and objective measures.” Hao Chen & Susan Dumais

  11. In top 20 results Not in top 20 results Taxonomy compared to search result lists Category is 36% faster Category is 48% faster Median Search Time in Seconds Source: Chen & Dumais

  12. Time saved—Taxonomy compared to search result lists • 1 hour per day searching x 36% faster = 22 minutes each day • 22 minutes x 250 working days per year = 5500 minutes or 92 hours per year

  13. Time saved—Taxonomy compared to search result lists

  14. Trusted advisers—Taxonomy avoids costs • “The amount of time wasted in futile searching for vital information is enormous, leading to staggering costs …” Sue Feldman, • Poor classification costs a 10,000 user organization $10M each year—about $1,000 per employee. Jakob Nielsen, useit.com

  15. Knowledge workers spend up to 2.5 hours each day looking for information … … But find what they are looking for only 40% of the time. Source: Kit Sims Taylor

  16. Knowledge workers spend more time re-creating existing content than creating new content 8% 25% Source: Kit Sims Taylor (cited by Sue Feldman in her original article)

  17. Cost saved by not recreating content

  18. Agenda • Taxonomy value propositions • What the research says • Example ROI

  19. Key Factors in ROI • Breadth • “How many people will metadata affect?” • Repeatability • “How many times a day will they use it? • Cost/Benefit • “Is this a costly effort with little or no benefits?” Source: Todd Stephens, Dublin Core Global Corporate Circle

  20. Some common taxonomy ROI scenarios • Customer support • Cutting costs • Increased sales • Knowledge worker productivity • Less time searching, more time working • Avoiding re-creating information that already exists • Catalog site • Increased sales • Increased productivity • Compliance • Avoiding penalties • R&D productivity • Faster time to market

  21. How to estimate costs—Tagging Inspired by: Ray Luoma, BAU Solutions

  22. How to estimate costs—Assumptions

  23. How to estimate costs—Total cost of ownership (TCO)

  24. Sample ROI Calculations Inspired by: Todd Stephens, Dublin Core Global Corporate Circle

  25. Summary • Taxonomy Value Propositions • Find information faster • Avoid recreating information that already exists • Increase sales • Avoid compliance penalties • Improve R&D effectiveness • Don’t sell “taxonomy”, sell the vision of what you want to be able to do. • Do the calculus (costs and benefits) • Quantify the tangible & intangible benefits • Quantify the total cost of ownership including maintenance & tagging • Support your calculations with research

  26. QuestionsJoseph A. Busch+ 415-377-7912jbusch@taxonomystrategies.comhttp://ww.taxonomystrategies.com

  27. Bibliography • M. Hearst, A. Elliott, J. English, R. Sinha, K. Swearingen & K. Yee. “Finding the Flow in Website Search.” 45 Communications of the ACM (Sept 2002) http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/papers/cacm02.pdf • Sue Feldman. "The high cost of not finding information." 13:3 KM World (March 2004) http://www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/index.cfm?action=readarticle&Article_ID=1725&Publication_ID=108 • K.S. Taylor. "The brief reign of the knowledge worker," 1998. http://online.bcc.ctc.edu/econ/kst/BriefReign/BRwebversion.htm.

More Related