Our work with Fortune 500 companies has taken us through several different knowledge management challenges. The following paragraphs describe three of the more common challenges we’ve faced:
Data Migration. As knowledge management software has evolved and legacy systems are taken offline, migrating data and content from one system to another has become a common, labor intensive challenge. Our teams work carefully with the content to not only preserve its integrity, but to turn challenge into opportunity by introducing new architecture and titling and streamlining metadata.
We’ve worked with numerous content management systems and are well-versed in common workflow software. Our specialists hit the ground running on projects, whether on-site or off-site, and provide the kind of extraordinary attention to detail that a project like this requires on a daily basis.
Taxonomy and Relationship Mapping. The best knowledge management search functionality means both top-shelf technology as well as user-friendly relationship mapping and content architecture that allows users to quickly access the data they seek. Often, clients rely solely on the former, compelling the user into a trial-and-error hunt for content to find what they’re looking for.
A well-constructed content structure gives users a logical, linear alternative to find content – especially content which they are not even aware exists. Our specialists often develop the taxonomy of a content database in parallel with other tasks, such as data migration and content updates. As they work through content during an update or migration, they synergistically become familiar with that universe of content, and are in excellent position to develop its most logical organization.
Metadata Tagging. Finally, the critical challenge of properly tagging content with the appropriate metadata can be labor-intensive and time consuming, but the correct execution of this work is absolutely critical for any enterprise system. Much of the tagging can be automated when data is initially entered into a system, but as data is updated, migrated from legacy systems, or introduced in a hurried or non-systematic fashion, its ability to be found by the end-user attenuates quickly over time as systems and content are upgraded.
We step into a metadata project by scoping the task in terms of time and resources, and recommend solutions based on the needs of the project and other client constraints. We begin the project by reviewing the metadata closely and then updating and tagging content as quickly as possible. We work closely to the client to not only tag data in accordance with the client guidance, but to also raise issues we observe in the content as we’re working with it.
