Folksonomy Can Help Financial Firms Improve Productivity and Service by Jeff Picozzi

A folksonomy can bolster productivity and information findability at financial firms. One primary focus regarding customer data and information management for financial firms is the ability to retrieve relevant information in a timely manner. Also called social tagging, a folksonomy is the user-generated tagging of information for retrieval. Folksonomies have become more popular in information management systems over the last decade.

With regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley dictating that customer data must be protected, some financial firms have been dissuaded from leveraging folksonomies. However, folksonomies by themselves do not violate Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. As long as the collected tags from social tagging are managed in the same way as the actual metadata is, there is no difference in the usage of metadata or folksonomies for the purposes of the Sarbanes-Oxley customer data protections.

When a financial firm's employees tag various pieces of information within a financial information management system, they are adding additional data points that improve search. When search functionality is improved with increased data points upon which search may function, the ability of employees to find information is elevated, and information is found more rapidly. In fact, according to a recent technical report published by HP Labs, standardized tags emerge over time with the use of social tagging functionality.

While a comprehensive taxonomy may have been developed for a financial firm, its employees may use words that are different from the financial firm's listing of terms. In this way, a financial firm can learn from its employees what terminology is utilized throughout the system. The employees can provide a pathway to improve the financial listing of terms to make all information, not just that with which tags have been associated, more findable.

Financial firms leverage front-line personnel who interact with customers and consumers - a point of differentiation explained clearly in Sarbanes-Oxley in terms of data protection - in a fast-paced environment. Call centers, support personnel and back-end processing roles within a firm benefit from better findability of content.

From a records and information management perspective, folksonomies can be implemented and the tags stored in the same way in which metadata is currently stored within the firm to comply with existing records management standards.

In addition to improving findability, a folksonomy enables the rapid association of interrelated information at a financial firm. Tags can be related to other tags and even to terms within the official taxonomy to form associations. By showing employees other documents that may be related to the one they are viewing, a financial firm provides more outlets for the emergence of productivity and world-class service.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/industry/financial-services/folkson...
	See more stories from ironmountain

Most recent headlines