SharePoint 2010′s ability to store metadata is being touted as one reason that it is now a viable platform for enterprise content management. Yet according to AIIM’s 2011 report: “Using SharePoint for ECM,” only 8% of survey respondents have completed their upgrade to 2010.

When asked, “What were the biggest issues for you in upgrading to SharePoint 2010?” The number one issue cited was “Standardizing on taxonomy or metadata template.”

This challenge I believe fits the old adage, the longest journey starts with a single step. Every company has metadata and contextual information stored in older versions of content management systems, legacy applications like Lotus Notes, or on individual desktops. The collective knowledge,  vocabulary and metadata of the organization sits in those repositories. Like nuggets of gold, they must be mined and culled from legacy systems and redundant, outdated and trivial terms must be discarded and appropriate ones put to use in SharePoint 2010.

All content, including documents are tied to business process transactions, it is not the name of the document that defines it, but its role in a business process. For instance, a “contract” for Piggly Wigglgy in a sales process triggers different functions, process and activities in the legal department post signature. It is the same content, but increases in complexity based on business trigger events that include additional content and metadata e.g. modification of standard terms.

To explain, I will borrow what Rahel Baillie defines as the “content asset amplification” effect. Rahel describes this as the transformation of an “information transaction.” Rahel goes on, “An Information transaction is comprised of a sum of 1 to n sets of content artifacts including modules, style sheets, audiences, data, graphics and potentially multiple others” It looks like this:

Could this formula be the baseline for common metadata standard? I think so, Rahel describes the basis of the formula as a “information transaction.” Because transactions involve an information or document exchange, it is not the name of the document that defines it, but the role in the business process. In the case of the sales contract, who else had input? Did delivery add special terms? Did accounts receivable have input on payment terms? What wording or concessions did legal approve? Each input adds another layer to the document.

Sales Contract modification Case Study

This is an example of a recent contract negotiation that required modification of deliverables and terms on a sales contract.

Client requirements:

• Modification of standard delivery process from offsite to 50% onsite. Approval required: Delivery, T&E and Legal. Wording required: Delivery (P1) and Legal (P2).
• Modification to indemnification clause. Approval required: Legal.  Wording required: Legal
• Modification of payment terms from 50% on signing to milestone payments.  Approval required: CFO and Delivery.  Wording Required: AR (P3)

I am going to highlight both examples that touch on the legal department. A taxonomy allows the chief council and staff to have content components of “contract terms – delivery” and “contract terms – indemnification” for reuse. Without a taxonomy, the reuse and findability would be based on manual search or worse yet someone remembering where similar terms were used in the past. Assigning Processes to Rahel’s Asset Amplification the equation now looks like this:

Although this equation looks complicated, it is actually quite natural, and is a representation of how existing business documents flow within your organization. As information flows from process to process for input, it dynamically adds complexity to content and metadata. Corporate standards are then applied to allow for the dynamic syncing and presentment of content from business process to process.

So where do you start? This is up for debate, if you went to the doctor and said, “I don’t feel well,” they will come back with “where does it hurt?” Trite I know, but there is no standard starting place. Today’s options for taxonomy and metadata creation are:

• purchase an off the shelf taxonomy specific to your industry or business function
• manually create a taxonomy from the ground up
• use an automated creation by using a tool for element discovery and extraction
• combinations of the above

If you are working with the type of people who need to be shown something, bring in technology and present the metadata in a hierarchical list to a group for refinement. If user adoption is paramount, you may want to pull people into a room for a facilitated card sorting exercise. SharePoint taxonomy expert @mikedoane shared his methodology for taxonomy and metadata development:

For Mike and his team, it’s about people and processes and how a company wants to govern its data and information.

There is no one answer, taxonomy and metadata is specific to your circumstance and business requirements. To answer the question about standards for taxonomy and metadata, are we there yet? Standards? No, but there are best practice guidelines specific to the design structure and term relationships and how to apply them to your SharePoint 2010 information architecture.

Happy classifying!

I had a phone call yesterday with a client who had a content findability problem. We discussed the value of the SG&A Taxonomy and how information, data and content typically travel with a business process. An invoice to accounts receivable, a bill to accounts payable, a customer order to sales, and a contract to legal. We talked about common content that companies have, and how global “best in class companies” benchmark based on common definitions for “apples to apples” comparison.

He said something to me that I often reference, “look at the Dewey Decimal System.” He then said something that expanded the idea, “go into a Library and walk up to the card catalog” He went on, “Dewey’s system enables you to go anywhere in the world to find a book in any city.” Saying that, this client did something that I failed to do, he talked about how a common classification framework adds value outside of the walls of one company. What if every library had their own classification system? What if each librarian tweaked the system and then left without telling anyone? What would happen?

Yet in business today, that happens all the time. CIO’s change, at one point the average tenure was 18 months. What happens to enterprise knowledge when staff changes? What is the impact when a Sr. Architect or lead programmer leaves? What knowledge disappears with their departure?

From my experience, I have never seen nor heard of a virtual card catalog for enterprise information. There is no Dewey system that integrates disparate systems information architecture and content nuances. Sure we do have a new breed of software for ontology and taxonomy management, but those are shell products that must be populated with a one-off vocabulary, not taking into consideration the commonality of information across companies. I was thinking, nope, there isn’t, but there should be.

Those who know me know I like to cook. Early in my quest to develop a taxonomy tied to common business terms, people would ask, “what do you do?” In reply, I said that most people like organization in their lives, especially chefs. If you go into a chef’s kitchen, there is an order to it. Spices go in one spot, knives in another and potatoes in another. There was rhyme and reason to their storage system. It was the combination of a passion for cooking and that in every company I worked, finding content in a timely manner was an issue. Those two things fueled my desire to organize content in neat and tidy “cabinets.”

I mentioned in an earlier blog post, back in the early 1980′s, I worked in a data center, very closely with a corporate librarian. Her charter was to bring order to information chaos. Fast forward to today, finding enterprise information is still hard and getting harder. According to IDC unstructured information (e.g. document repositories, portals, intranets) is being added to corporate data repositories at record rates.

One of the challenges that prohibits quality content storage and access is the lack of common metadata standards which is the output of a taxonomy project. I think that the use of taxonomy starts with content creation, not for keyword stacking in content, although appropriate use of keywords is important for SEO, but for the capture of the natural language and specific business terms used in organizational vocabulary and content.

The value of an enterprise taxonomy is it creates a common language, facilitates content and information access, increases productivity and cross functional interoperability, and in the long run, will save money on information storage and archival costs.

Below are the functions, processes and activities where an enterprise taxonomy can impact your organization.

Last night, when I heard that Steve Jobs passed away, I also heard for the first time a quote from his 2005 commencement address to Stanford, it read:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

His untimely death and that quote kept me awake last night. I tossed, turned, and I got up and looked out the window, thinking; connect the dots, connect the dots, connect the dots.

It was not the first time this issue came up. Over last few years, I often asked myself, “What am I doing?” I heard back, “it’s too big” or “don’t bite off more than you can chew” or the worst “how are you going to compete with IBM, Oracle or SAP?” But I woke up and did the same thing over again day after day (is that the sign of something?). Yes, it is. Creating taxonomies and controlled vocabularies are quite fun. It’s starting and agreeing on terms is the chore.

Where are we now?

We have all been there, a place where technology crapped out and human intervention was required. That is not a bad thing mind you, but with all the advances over the past few years, why? Why was a manual upload required? Why was a cut and past needed? Why did I have to go to two screens, or even worse two platforms to get two numbers that had to be added together and then included in an Excel document, then emailed to my manager?

Content complexity is getting worse, not better

You can go to almost any company today and find untethered content, content gaps, and search and findability problems. You can go to any company today, and people may get the information they need, but often needs to wade through report after report cull it, and create a new report before sending it along via email.

People have been talking about the problem for years, Ann Rockey in 2003, Robert Glushko in 2005, Darrin Stewart in 2011, yet no integrated solution is coming forward. There are great solutions for search, community, content management and business process management, but there is no single solution that integrates them all.

So this morning, I connected the dots. It still takes work, time and commitment from senior management. But it can be done, and my approach it is not an all or nothing endeavor.

What does the future hold?

With SharePoint adoption rates at an all time high, and in order to deliver a better and needed solution to the market, I have decided to focus on an Enterprise Taxonomy for SharePoint exclusively. For one because SharePoint 2010 and its term store’s metadata capability makes it different product today than it was 3 years ago. I believe in the coming years SharePoint could be a game changer in the enterprise content management space.

So with that in mind, I thank Steve Jobs for his genius and for a dark night that allowed me to wake anew and connect the dots. Rest in Peace Brother.

Seamus