This slide deck presents why good information management should be a core competency in any organization. Those who ignore this need are paying for it even though it doesn't show up on the balance sheet. Feel free to download and edit as needed to use for your own purposes. Please share any feedback as well!

1. why metadata is important

2. Everyone is in the information business. What separates industries is how they use their information…

3. Oil companies need information on where to drill for oil. Pharmaceutical companies need information on what drugs work and how. Financial services companies need information on what assets are worth. This may sound obvious, but when you consider what a poor job most companies do at managing their information it makes you wonder…

4. Over 30 billion original documents are created every year. - 85% will never be retrieved. - 50% are duplicates. - 60% of stored documents are obsolete.

5. For every $1 spent to create a document, $10 is spent on its management.

6. Hours per week the average information worker spends: 14.5 13.3 9.5 3.5 2.2 3.0 recreating content they couldn’t find reading and answering emails searching for content searching but not finding creating content version control issues

7. Some back-of-the-napkin math should show how much productivity is lost. 8.7 hrs/week wasted x 50 weeks x $30/hr x 1000 employees $13.05 million lost Your (mis)information is costing you millions.

8. You’re working for your data. Shouldn’t your data be working for you? (the answer is yes) One of the keys is metadata.

9. noun; data about data. Metadata is a way of identifying information. metadata

10. Essentially, metadata are descriptors. Some metadata for this puppy might be: puppy Fido dog furry golden retriever canine mammal

11. How does this come into play? For example, lets say you search for the following terms: What might the results look like for each term? “dog” “golden retriever puppy” How useful would the results be? How much time would you have to spend going through the results to find what you actually wanted?

12. “dog” “golden retriever puppy”

13. “dog” “golden retriever puppy” Clearly, this more specific search term is better. But it only works if someone has taken the time to associate the metadata.

14. This puppy example illustrates not only the effectiveness of metadata but also the importance of tagging content with metadata. If users don’t take the time to attach metadata when they create, upload, or edit documents the benefits will be lost. document name expiration date audience version DOC project department

15. Delete slide if you use SP2010 So how do you manage metadata in SharePoint 2007? In SharePoint 2007, metadata is captured in list columns. When you create a file or item, upload a file, or edit a file or item, you can enter information in the columns. Below are the columns for a basic task list. Anytime a task is created or edited, these fields can be changed. This metadata tells you information about the tasks and lets you manipulate the list – for instance, by filtering Status to only show tasks that have not been started.

16. Delete slide if you use SP2007 So how do you manage metadata in SharePoint 2010? Microsoft spent a great deal of effort improving SharePoint’s metadata capabilities for the 2010 version. You can tag items, documents, and pages with keywords. As you type, pre-configured keywords are suggested. You also have the option of creating new keywords. SharePoint 2010 even allows you to tag an external page with keywords.

17. Delete slide if you use SP2007 So how do you manage metadata in SharePoint 2010? The Tag Cloud Web Part creates a tag cloud of the most commonly used keywords.

18. Delete slide if you use SP2007 So how do you manage metadata in SharePoint 2010? You don’t want users out on their own creating keywords. The Term Store Management Tool lets you predefine keywords and terms that can be used across all your SharePoint sites. This even supports multilingual terms. Keywords: Business Plan Expense Report Marketing Plan Purchase Order Time-off Request Relocation Form Financial Estimate Change Order Procurement Contract

19. Remember: If you don’t manage your information, your business will pay for it. Information management should become a core competency for every organization. This can’t happen without the use of metadata.

20. End User Training, Support, and Advice on Launching SharePoint www.sharepointsupported.com On Twitter @SPSupported