Taxonomies provide an intelligent structure to information and content. Applying a taxonomy to the work of technical communicators offers opportunities to control content, find content, create and maintain content relationships. This session will present the taxonomy developed for an Oracle Finance implementation and focus on how each can be applied to specific use The organization’s business processes were used to establish the taxonomy with the highest level representing the business functions followed by the activities performed for the function. The lowest level of the taxonomy resulted in transaction support materials resulting from the activity.

1. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Rev 5058-CO900E
PUBLIC INFORMATION
Create and use a functional taxonomy
Without fear!
Mollye Barrett
Information Development Manager, Controls and Visual Business
May 19, 2014

2. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Overview
 Background on the project and how we arrived at the need for a functional
taxonomy
 Articulate some of the project challenges
 Talk about the process we use to create the taxonomy and show some of
the artifacts
 Share how technical communicators are central to defining order and the
skills they possess to support that order
 This is not a session about traditional taxonomy based on organizisms
 This is not a session about user-generated folksonomy

3. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
About Taxonomies
 Taxonomy is systematic classification
 Taxonomies provide an intelligent structure to information and content
 Applying a taxonomy to the work of technical communicators offers
opportunities to control content, find content, create and maintain content
relationships

4. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
About the project
 Organization determined that they would deploy a global instance of Oracle
Finance
 Previous Oracle deployment was in North America by IT staff in US
 Hired technical writers/trainers to create training for implementation
and support
 Scope not defined
 Added developers in other countries to support their locale
 Added business analysts midway through the project
 Added technical writers/trainers as development processed and scope
was defined

5. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Challenge
 IT supported business but did not know business processes
 Business focus on WHO, WHY, WHEN (contracts and customers)
 IT focused on WHAT and HOW (software and systems)
 IT owned the software and the training but did not want to include Business
WHO, WHY, WHEN in training
 Oracle upgrade had impact on other IT systems
 Identifying AS IS and TO BE processes for content development not same
priority in Business and IT
 Distributed content development team with each member focused on
Oracle functions
 Global content team with members in US, Turkey, Latin America, India

6. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Why create a taxonomy?
 Training materials were required for a system-wide Oracle upgrade
 No existing documentation, training, or documented business
processes
 Training team developed a functional taxonomy that helped provide a
clear development structure for an Oracle Finance implementation.
 The goal was to document business functions, map functions to tasks
and software. Finally, the taxonomy aligned functions to identify role-
based training and function-based help.

7. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
What did we need?
 Understand the tasks for which users needed training
 Put the user tasks into a structure for the enterprise
 Centralize a structure: business tasks that IT supports
 Standard terms: business tasks and software functions
 Universally applied terms and structure
 Efficiency to manage inter-related training tasks
 Cross-searchability
 Conceptual framework - card sort
 Place for the information object (training)

8. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Where to start?
First instinct was to structure topics by Oracle software functions
 Many other software products developed over time to feed Oracle
 Lots of customization around Oracle
 Software functions were esoteric
 Business users worked on tasks that were not explicit
 Tasks were embedded in processes that were not Oracle specific
 Deployment timeframe was not defined
 Development was iterative, based on module deployment
We decided to focus on tasks users performed and present with the
supporting software functions

9. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Avenues of approach
 Access software through IT
 All systems, all roles (with finance, not as easy as it sounds)
 Development specs
 Interview business experts about their functions and tasks
 Minimal time allowances, monthly opportunities, not all explicit
 Task dependencies were not always clear
 Finance was global with process definition in process, lots of exceptions
and sub systems
 Gathered lots of information, no structure
 The more we learned, the more difficult it was to see inter-relationships

10. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Sort it out!
P1
Sales
Management
P2
Order
to
Cash
P3
Procure
to
Pay
P4
Service
Management
P5
Product
Lifecycle
Management
P6
Supply
Chain to
Execution
P7
Finance
Management
P8
Human
Resource
Management
Company sells
goods and services
Customers
buy goods
and services
Company
buys
and pays for
good and services
to sell to customers
Customers buy
services and
company provides
services
Company
tracks
incoming and outgoing
payments;
identifies
profits and losses,
reports results
Company hires
employees to
sell, produce,
and manage
goods and services
Company
makes
products
Company buys
materials to make
products to sell

11. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Continue to sort
 Use available data
 Get SMEs involved - narratives and
business processes
 What do we know about finance?
Terms and meaning!
 Levels - prepare for processes and
activities
Process Thread
Sub Process
Activity
Process Area

12. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Research, refine and continue sort
Single Concept
 Terms represent simple or unitary concept
 Get terms right, remember first principles!
 A unit of thought
 May be a single-word term or a multi-word term if required to
represent the concept
 Three main categories
 Concrete entities (payment, bill, invoice)
 Abstract concepts (record to report)
 Proper nouns
 Levels of top (parent) terms/function with roll-up (child) terms/function

13. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Start to build

14. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
Usage and interaction
Taxonomy aligned all groups with common structure, language and role-
based activities
 IT: Develop and deploy software that supports business requirements
 Development, deliverables, testing, communication with business
and Finance (BPD, Functional Specs and Training)
 Business: Develop standard processes with supporting software and
explicit requirements
 Requirements explicit and software deliverables support context
communication with IT and Finance
 Finance: Develop global processes
 Regulatory compliance validated, gaps analyzed, communication
with IT and business
 Training: Support IT software deployment, business requirements, and
global processes

15. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.PUBLIC INFORMATION
References
 A collection of controlled vocabulary terms organized into a hierarchical
structure. (ANSI Z39.19-2005 (R2010)
 Hedden, Heather. The Accidental Taxonomist. Medford, NJ:
Information Today, 2010
 Stewart, Darin L. Building Enterprise Taxonomies. United States:
Mokita, 2008

16. Copyright © 2014 Rockwell Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
www.rockwellautomation.com
Follow ROKAutomation on Facebook & Twitter.
Connect with us on LinkedIn.
Rev 5058-CO900F
PUBLIC INFORMATION
Questions and discussion
mbarrett1@ra.rockwell.com