Content Taxonomy

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It is not surprising when organizations consider deploying a content management system (CMS), they look first at establishing a technology platform. But what they often fail to consider is the governance, or taxonomy, that will enable them to reap the benefits of such systems. In the simplest terms, an organization's taxonomy is the skeleton from which all content hangs.

Content management systems have evolved considerably over the past few years to cover a broad range of capabilities, and many companies have developed suites of products that can solve most of an organizaton's content management needs from a software perspective. However, these products won't analyze and develop a taxonomy.

Taxonomy should be central to any enterprise content strategy. Without that framework, even the best technology may not meet expectations because of the numerous sites and discrete pieces of information it has no way of interconnecting.

Forrester researchers note in Best Practices in Taxonomy Development and Management that, ideally, taxonomies "represent agreed-upon terms and relationships between ideas or things and serve as a glossary or knowledge map helping to define how the organization thinks about itself and represents itself, its products and services to the outside world."

Even though developing a taxonomy can be expensive and difficult, the benefits are enormous: better and quicker access to information; improved relationships with patients, physicians and consumers; and less duplication of work.

For System Administrators

• Improve your Website or Intranet's usability
  The problem with today's healthcare Websites and intranets is hardly a lack of content - many sites have thousands upon thousands of pages. The problem is that they're just not usable.
  
  VitalSite's taxonomy components manage the architecture of your site for you, allowing you to pull together content by "health context", facility, or other criteria. This advanced technology makes VitalSite’s SmartPanels and SmartSearch possible - and your site is easier to use as a result.
• Defining your taxonomy is the basis for growth
  As part of each engagement, we work with our clients to define a complete content taxonomy for a site. This consists of an agreed-upon categorization and vocabulary to describe and inter-relate the content on your Website or Intranet.
  
  For a Website, this encompasses the names/terminologies of the conditions you treat, specialties for your providers and categories for your classes and events. Alternatively on an intranet, this is a definitive list of departments, facilities and other categories as required.

Overall System Features

• Inter-relating your health library
  Define content by health context, season, demographic, and other key attributes, so visitors can use a single search to access all content about pediatric spring allergies in one place.
  
  With the correct taxonomy in place, you can simultaneously show all classes, clinical trials, physicians and other content that meet those same criteria, creating integrated ‘calls-to-action’ automatically and driving revenue directly to your organization.
• Use with all of your modules
  Geonetric’s content taxonomy also enables the interconnection of relevant content from almost any of VitalSite’s interactive modules.
  
  Providing visitors automatically with relevant ‘action items’, including related physicians accepting appointments, interactive health tools (disease tracker), clinical trials, classes and events, services and more, creates a seamless, holistic view of your organization and overall better site experience.