Yesterday I had the privilege to present a webinar on topic of Findability as part of the AIIM Wednesday webinar series. (Findability: the quality of being locatable or navigable, includes technologies and concepts such as Search, Taxonomies, Information Architecture, Auto-Classification, Agents, Discovery, Ontologies, and the Semantic Web.)
I say privilege for two reasons. First, Findability it is one of my most favorite topics (2nd only to knowledge management). Second, the webinar gave me a chance to share some of the latest results from the survey we are running to support the upcoming AIIM Market IQ on Findability. – (BTW - if you haven't already, you can take the survey.)
The webinar is available for download. I have also posted my slides to Slideshare, available below.
The webinar was sponsored by Google, Baynote, Attivio and Systemware. As usual, the AIIM webinar attracted a lively crowd. Approximately 250 attended attended, and also as usual we could not answer all of the questions that were posed during the presentation. Following tradition, I am addressing the outstanding questions here in my blog.
Q: I beg to differ that "in the consumer world, findability is not an issue". There are many daily searches I do, outside of Google (and some in) that are incredibly frustrating. I have no question here, but thought you should know...
A: (First let me explain for those who did not attend, this comment was made in reaction to a statement I made in my presentation to the effect that Findability is less of a issue on the commercial web, that most sites on the commercial web have strategically looked at this issue and strategically built findability into the site.) Sorry, my statement may have been misleading. I was not proposing that all web-based experiences are "effective". I was drawing attention to some web-sites, mostly those that are commercial in nature (e.g. amazon.com, itunes store, e-bay), that rely heavily on user interfaces to drive their business. I made this statement to reinforce the survey finding that currently, web-based experiences with findability are driving increased demand for better findability within the enterprise/intranet. Many (not all) commercial website owners have taken time to fine-tune a findabilty strategy because, it many cases, the findability is absolutely vital to their existence. (Imagine not being able to find the music you want in iTunes – you would abandon the site very quickly, resulting in lost revenue to Apple.)
That said, yes you are right, there are still many commercial web sites that do not provide a good findability experience. (See earlier post in which I discuss this further). And, clearly tehre are many internet sites (i.e. non-commercial/consumer-oriented)) whose findability rivals some of the worst intranet/enterprise sites. Findability is tricky and demands careful and targeted development of strategy and solution design. Its an effort that some organizations have not yet appreciated teh value of - they will, in my opinion, especially as we can point to the effectiveness of the state-of-the-art found in some commercial web sites.
Q: Are there any other findability solutions apart from Google?
A: Oh lord yes. Google was the only sponsor that paid for a speaking role in the webinar, but there are many other solution providers that address findability - some can complement a tool such as Google, some directly compete with a tool such as Google. In fact, three other solution providers, Baynote, Attivio and Systemware also sponsored this webinar. But the list of solution providers goes far beyond even these companies. Rather than list them all here, I direct you to an exhaustive list posted on Dan Keldsen's blog, a list we used to vet the list of technology providers we query about in our survey.
Q: Who typically owns the taxonomy in an organization?
A: In many organizations, no one, which is part of the challenge in maintaining an information architecture or findability strategy. According to a study I did nearly 3 years ago, when the taxonomy is an online resource, as part of a findability strategy, the taxonomy is usually (57% of those surveyed) owned by IT. (The other 43% of responses were scattered across records managers, corporate librarians, LOB managers, end users and management.) No matter who own it, recommended practice is to have a mix of disciplines involved in the process of developing it. While one might argue that IT should "own" the online taxonomy as a tool, in most cases IT should not be tasked with the definition and development of a taxonomy on business content, as they are likely not SMEs of the business content or its usage by the business community, which is the focus or value statement of a taxonomy within a findability strategy.
Stay tuned, there are three more questions that I will cover in the next post.
