Taxonomy & Thesaurus Management
Libraries would be of little use if they were unable to organize and catalog books. The same is true for business data. Business information is of very little value to an enterprise unless it is organized into a logical framework that allows for its retrieval or analysis. Taxonomies help users quickly move from general topics to specific subcategories to find what you really need.
In today’s fast paced environment, organizations who rely on convoluted spreadsheets and document sharing systems will not be able to compete with companies who use intelligent methods of organizing their data. Creating a taxonomy based on a standard like SKOS is a great way to make accumulated knowledge more accessible and reusable. It helps companies find and make sense of the right information when it is needed in the shortest time possible.
“by 2024, companies using graphs and semantic approaches for natural language technology (NLT) projects will have 75% less AI technical debt than those that don’t.”
Gartner, Inc: ‘Predicts 2020: Artificial Intelligence — the Road to Production’ (Anthony Mullen et al, December 2019)
“A semantic knowledge graph can be used to power data management tasks such as data integration in helping automate a lot of redundant and recurring activities.”
Gartner, Inc : Augmented Data Catalogs: Now an Enterprise Must-Have for Data and Analytics Leaders (Ehtisham Zaidi and Guido De Simoni, September 2019)
The biggest challenges for organizations who are not using taxonomy management software:
Manual work with ineffective tools
Spreadsheet software like Excel is popularly used for taxonomy management along with some freely available open source tools. Regularly, users quickly find out that these approaches do not scale for various reasons and are only suitable for small taxonomies.
Taxonomy management without text mining
A structured taxonomy combined with text mining capabilities helps machines understand relationships and hierarchies between all your data – which can then suggest further information relevant to the user’s search.
Slow content delivery
As a result of manual spreadsheets and only weakly developed text mining capabilities, a team’s ability to deliver quality content is often quite slow. These spreadsheet databases often require audits that are conducted only on an annual or biannual basis, so long-term inconsistencies are only made visible then. Even with the daily management of Excel-based taxonomies, changes to the taxonomy could take weeks to implement in customer search platforms after trends were observed.
Useful Resources
Check out the ultimate guide to taxonomies in business.
The biggest changes organizations can leverage with PoolParty’s taxonomy management.
Taxonomy management is the first step in achieving structured knowledge and data management based on a semantic framework. These frameworks can be the building blocks for intelligent search platforms, virtual assistants such as recommender systems, or even enterprise-wide content and knowledge hubs. Taxonomies improve user search because they form the basis for complex search vectors, including precisely describing the context of specific terms by bundling synonymous terms. Users in turn are given more relevant, personalized search results.
Along with this benefit, taxonomies together with ontologies can also serve as the basis for powerful recommendation systems.
Experience the major benefits of semantic search with PoolParty Semantic Suite today.
Controlled vocabularies
Many organizations waste time and effort searching for data due to mislabeling or different terminology across departments. With PoolParty’s collaborative interface, departments can bundle synonymous terms under one concept and relate it to other concepts to reduce confusion while searching for information. This is especially pertinent to international companies that use different foreign languages in different offices – PoolParty’s multilingual capabilities allow you to create a cross-border language for your company.
Agile data
Organizations need to be able to pivot and shift based on growing trends within the market. Agile taxonomy management means that you can reuse and add data for other types of data models. The flexibility to continuously revise and update taxonomies by key stakeholders ensures that organizations stay relevant and up-to-date with consumer and industry demands alike.
Intelligent search
Taxonomies help connect the dots to understand how your information is structured, and build a strong foundation for search platforms that can retrieve results based on these connected dots. Having a structured taxonomy in combination with text mining capabilities, helps machines understand connections and hierarchies between all of your data – which can then suggest further information relevant to the user’s search.