BIIA member Wand Inc. has recently published a White Paper: Value of Descriptive MetaData for Enterprise Search.
There are two main types of information that most organizations need to manage: 1) structured data, which is usually in databases and often quantitative in nature; and, 2) unstructured data, or text. Structured data is handled fairly well with business intelligence tools and data warehousing. According to the Aberdeen Group, unstructured data can account for up to 80% of the information available to a business.
As the amount of unstructured information continues to grow, organizations who have not addressed search relevance will continue to be at a competitive disadvantage. It’s more critical than ever to reduce the amount of time employees are wasting searching for information and, more importantly, to give knowledge workers a complete picture of the information the organization has so the best business decisions can be made. Enabling descriptive metadata with an organizational taxonomy and automatic tagging should be investigated by every organization that is serious about solving this critical business issue.
