By Alexander Church |
September 6, 2024
Why you need information architecture
In today’s digital world, the sheer volume of information produced by organisations is staggering. Whether it’s documents, emails, or data spread across various platforms, managing and making sense of this information has become a critical task. This is where information architecture comes into play, providing the much-needed structure that allows businesses to organise, find, and leverage their content effectively. In the context of platforms like Microsoft 365 (M365) and SharePoint, these elements become even more essential for ensuring efficient information management.
After years of experience, Senior Consultant and Information Architecture expert here at Metataxis, Alexander Church, reveals why information architecture is the backbone of successful information management.
Read on:
What is information architecture?
At its core, Information Architecture (IA) is the practice of structuring and organising content in a way that makes it easy to navigate and retrieve. It provides a blueprint for how information is grouped, classified, and related across systems. IA is the backbone of your information management strategy, ensuring that employees can quickly locate the resources they need without wasting valuable time searching or duplicating efforts.
Think of IA as the foundation of a building. Without it, everything else built on top is unstable and disorganised. In digital platforms like SharePoint, IA determines how libraries, lists, metadata, and navigation are structured, enabling efficient collaboration and access to content.
Think of IA as the foundation of a building. Without it, everything else built on top is unstable and disorganised.
The role of taxonomies in information management
Taxonomies go hand in hand with information architecture. They involve the categorisation and labelling of content in a logical and hierarchical way. A well-crafted taxonomy allows organisations to standardise how information is classified and retrieved, providing consistency across teams and departments.
For example, in SharePoint, taxonomies can be used to define a common language for documents and files. By using metadata tags and content types, taxonomies allow users to filter and search for documents with precision, cutting down the time spent trawling through shared folders. A good taxonomy enables a user to find a document based on its characteristics—whether that’s document type, department, status and so on —without needing to know the exact file name or location.
Why is this so important in Microsoft 365 and SharePoint?
Microsoft 365 and SharePoint are widely used platforms for information management, but their effectiveness is directly tied to the quality of the underlying information architecture. Without a well-thought-out structure, these powerful tools can become chaotic repositories where information gets lost, duplicated, or mismanaged.
A strong IA and taxonomy framework is therefore crucial when using M365 and SharePoint, giving you:
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1. Improved search and findability
SharePoint’s search function is powerful but is improved when there is managed metadata in place. When documents are consistently tagged and organised through a proper taxonomy in the Term Store, users can quickly find what they need using metadata filters or search terms. This is particularly important in large organisations where the volume of data can become overwhelming.
3. Governance and compliance
With ever-increasing regulations, such as GDPR, it’s essential to have a structure that supports information governance. Taxonomies allow organisations to apply consistent retention and compliance rules defined in Microsoft Purview across their information using metadata attributes to apply and trigger retention labels. In Microsoft 365, this can be combined with Information Protection policies to ensure that sensitive content is labelled, protected, and monitored across the system. With a robust information architecture in place, SharePoint has the potential to automate many of these processes, reducing the risk of human error and increasing efficiency and coverage.
2. Consistency across teams
M365 and SharePoint are collaborative platforms, often used by multiple teams and departments. Having a consistent taxonomy ensures that everyone across the organisation speaks the same language when categorising and managing content. This consistency leads to fewer mistakes, reduces redundancy, and improves efficiency.
4. Enhancing Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI tools
With the rise of AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot, information architecture elements such as taxonomies and ontologies (essentially taxonomies with semantic relationships between terms) become even more valuable. Copilot and other AI-driven tools rely on well-organised data to ‘ground’ results and thus provide more contextual and relevant insights. By having a solid information structure, AI tools can surface better, more accurate suggestions, helping users make informed decisions faster.
5. Streamlined collaboration
SharePoint and Teams are designed to facilitate collaboration, but without a clear information architecture, users can struggle to find the right content, leading to frustration and inefficiency. By building a coherent structure and taxonomy, you’re making it easier for teams to work together, share information, and ensure that the latest versions of documents are always accessible.
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Final thoughts
Information is a critical asset for any organisation, but without the right structures in place, it can quickly become overwhelming and unusable. Information architecture is the backbone of successful information management, ensuring that data is well-organised, accessible, and secure.
In platforms like Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, where collaboration and content management are core features, implementing a well-thought-out information architecture is not just beneficial but essential. It reduces inefficiency, drives collaboration, supports governance, and ultimately helps your organisation make better use of its most valuable resource—information.
By investing in information architecture, you’re laying the groundwork for a more efficient, scalable, and compliant information management system that will serve your organisation well into the future.
Information architecture is the backbone of successful information management, ensuring data is well-organised, accessible, and secure.
Get to grips with your information architecture
These are just some of the benefits of having a clear information architecture in place before implementing Microsoft 365.
Metataxis has been helping organisations identify and understand what needs to be considered prior to a M365 implementation to maximise success, boost usability and drive productivity. As information architecture experts, the Metataxis approach to information architecture in Microsoft 365 ensures practical, flexible, and cost-effective solutions to your information problems. We offer a wide range of information management, governance and information architecture services, including consulting and recommendations to system implementation and training.
