Video: Enterprise Information Architecture

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Enterprise Information Architecture

Friday, January 10, 2020 • Enterprise Community

Bram Wessel

Founder and Principal, Factor

Summary

We hear a lot of talk about “digital transformation.” But isn’t that what we’ve been doing since the Web emerged in the late 1990s? Why is this still so aspirational for so many organizations? In his consulting practice with Factor, Bram Wessel sees first-hand how enterprise-scale organizations are awakening to the reality that the information itself that drives experiences and gets implemented in technologies —the Information Layer, if you will— is increasingly a tangible organizational asset. As such, it’s as critical as any other kind of infrastructure. Bram joins Lou to ponder where we’ve been and where we might be headed in the realm of enterprise information architecture.

Key Insights

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Information is now viewed as a core asset and infrastructure of organizations, not just technology or experience.
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We are transitioning into an Information Era where organizations must effectively manage their information to facilitate digital transformation.
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Historical neglect of information architecture led to substantial pain points in user experience.
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Organizational alignment is critical; success depends on the collaboration between grassroots practitioners and executive sponsorship.
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Taxonomies and actively managing information models are essential to ensure that users can find relevant content easily.
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Companies often face 'taxonomy emergencies' where navigation issues disrupt user experience.
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E-commerce companies must differentiate between merchandising taxonomies and customer-facing navigation; misalignment can lead to lost sales.
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Information governance frameworks are vital for managing how organizations handle and evolve their information assets.
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The industry must recognize that organizations often exist at varying stages of maturity concerning information management practices.
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Agile and rapid development cycles require organizations to simultaneously focus on production and the underlying information architecture.

Notable Quotes

"It’s really painful in a couple of ways to be working in IA and Enterprise level 15 years ago because it was seen as a solvable problem through the application of technology."

"We found that most of the challenge of organizing information in an Enterprise setting required skills that I didn’t have, namely organizational psychology skills."

"Organizational alignment was is a huge one."

"A lot of organizations don’t realize how much managing information costs."

"The first rule of e-commerce is customers can’t buy products that they can’t find."

"Every time you touch information in a company, it costs money."

"Almost every company above a certain size at Enterprise scale is going to have a variety of different systems that need to share information."

"It’s very easy to relate product content to non-product content if you have the right taxonomy."

"The Information Era is about realizing that information itself has tangible value, just like staff or systems."

"When you reach mastery, you can say our information is a strategic organizational asset that has quantifiable equity."

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