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What is metadata management?

Metadata is more than just data about data. It’s used to describe the content, context and structure of information resources.

The bulk of content is unstructured, so metadata is essential for making business information searchable, discoverable, understandable and accessible to users. This is especially true as adoption of enterprise-level content management systems, like SharePoint, becomes more widespread.

Metadata management includes methods, technologies and behaviours that contribute to the creation and maintenance of fit for purpose metadata. It is essential to effective data and information management and a key element of any data governance program.

What are the benefits of good metadata management?

High quality, fit for purpose metadata is essential to successfully manage ever-growing stockpiles of business information.

Improved data quality

• Consistent
• Accurate
• Reliable
• Identifiable

Improved risk management

• Protect, classify and dispose of records appropriately

Improved business performance

• Leverage data for decision-making, planning, research and analytics

Increased productivity

• Improve search, discovery and accessibility
• Power auto-classification and auto-appraisal

Why is managing metadata important?

When metadata is doing its job well, it goes unnoticed. But when it’s poor quality or missing in action, you’ll notice the difference.

In the era of ubiquitous computing, metadata has become infrastructural, like the electrical grid or the highway system. We interact with it or generate it every day…It is a means by which the complexity of an object is represented in a simpler form…When metadata does its job well, it fades into the background… everyone takes it for granted.

 Jeffrey Pomerantz

Consistent metadata is fundamental to interoperability between systems and federated operations such as search, access and security, and appraisal. When metadata is poor quality, you’ll experience:

• Difficulty finding and sharing information
• Incomplete or inaccurate records
• Low quality data with inconsistencies, errors and duplication
• Stalled progress with digital transformation initiatives

Without functional metadata, operational data won’t accurately an organisation’s assets or their true state. In some cases, this has led to operational failure with catastrophic consequences.

How do I manage metadata in SharePoint?

While SharePoint has established itself as a go-to document management solution, it provides limited functionality for managing metadata.

a.k.a. software fills that critical gap, allowing organisations to build and maintain schemas that integrate directly with the SharePoint Term Store.

The a.k.a. data library provides a central source of metadata that can be enforced across almost any information system, including SharePoint.

Synercon can also provide the tools and expertise to implement auto-classification, where high quality, consistent metadata is automatically generated and applied to documents and records stored in SharePoint.