What is Metadata and Why is it a Huge Advantage Maker for Your Business?
Can you recall where you saved the document six months ago? If this question gives you an adrenaline rush, it's time to read on. Let's dig into a solution that could end such worries—using metadata in your Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system.
Imagine a growing business. As it has been expanding its digital document pool became a huge mountain. But there was a problem: everything was disorganised. Each department was doing its own thing, and finding important documents became a nightmare. It wasn't just slowing things down, but also risking compliance issues.
This mess highlights the important role of metadata in keeping an organised and efficient document management system.
What is Metadata?
In simple terms, metadata is "information about data." It's like a label that tells you what's inside a box. In a business setup, metadata helps in identifying, organising, and finding documents quickly. It helps manage workflows and ensure documents are stored or disposed of correctly.
There are different types of metadata:
Descriptive: Basic identifiers like title, author, and keywords.
Structural: Reveals how compound objects are organised, for example, how pages form chapters.
Administrative: Holds details concerning the creation and subsequent modifications of a file.
Why is Metadata so Important?
Metadata not only makes managing documents easier but also helps businesses move forward in their digital journey. Back to our growing business example, once they used metadata management, they experienced multiple benefits:
Collaboration: Once metadata management was implemented, teams across different departments could seamlessly collaborate on projects. Metadata tracked who made what changes, when, and why, creating a transparent channel of communication regarding the document’s journey across various departments.
Quick Wins: With accurate metadata, fetching a document became a swift, efficient process, proving particularly invaluable during time-sensitive projects or compliance audits.
Tips to Streamline Your Content Management with Metadata
Automate The Maintenance: ECM Integrations into your leading applications, like with OpenText, can automate metadata maintenance which will take place only one time as it should be – in your leading application.
Automatic Metadata pre-fill: It's like having a digital helper that keeps your documents organised all the time. Smart-implemented ECM solutions can save your users time by allowing metadata inheritance from location, document type, status etc.
Educate Your Team: Make sure all team members understand how important metadata is and how to use it properly, so everyone has a common understanding of your document management language.
Regular Check-ups: Regularly check your solutions – introducing too much manual metadata with endless dropdown lists can be contra-productive and stress you even more.
Tools to Try Out
Metadata Navigation: Allows users to filter and find content easily by using metadata.
Managed Metadata Service: Enables the central management of metadata across SharePoint sites.
Content Types: Define a set of metadata and behaviours for a particular kind of document, making categorisation and retrieval more efficient.
Smart View: Offers a unified, intuitive way to view, add, or edit metadata alongside content.
Connected Workspaces: Uses a “binder” principle to connect similar metadata to related documents from different parts of the organisation, and different processes improving cross-team collaboration, like customer or vendor dossier, for example.
Extended ECM: Syncs metadata from your leading applications like ERP, CRM, and others to allow the single source of truth and hassle-free metadata management.
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