In an earlier post I explained why metadata matters. This time I want to zoom out a little and discuss how to assess the quality of your document collection. Essential to turning data into information.
When clients come to us with the ambition to improve their ECM system, we first focus on the quality of their document collection. We start by explaining the difference between data, content, and information. A common way to define these three terms is as follows:
In this example every category depicts a quality improvement over the previous one.
I intentionally used the word ‘meaningful’ when describing the metadata in the Information category. Meaningful metadata provide more insights into the document than just the author and modification date; they tell us something about the context of the document. For example:
When thinking about improving search results or implementing new personalization features, it is critical to know the current quality level of your document collection. Even the most brilliant features cannot hide the truth when it comes to the quality of the underlying documents. That’s why every information plan should start with a qualitative audit.
Your information plan should hold at least the following elements: