The importance of taxonomies in the energy industry

Communication is key in the world of business, and an established taxonomy can help bridge the gap of understanding within an industry. This is particularly true for the energy industry, including oil, gas and renewables, which is brimming with domain-specific terminology associated with complex business process.

We’re going to take a look at the importance of taxonomies and how they can help information management systems in the energy industry.

What is a taxonomy?

Originally, the term ‘taxonomy’ was tied to the world of biology, with scientists using taxonomies to classify and distinguish organisms. Today, it carries a few different meanings depending on the context. Broadly speaking, a taxonomy is the way in which we classify and group similar concepts and things in the world. This is true for an information-based taxonomy too, where industries and businesses classify their information into meaningful categories and sub-categories. This, in essence, creates a hierarchy using metadata and can offer insights and a better understanding of relationships between information points. A well devised taxonomy will act as a knowledge map for a business or industry.

What is the importance of a taxonomy?

A well-implemented taxonomy for a sector such as the energy industry is vital for operations to run smoothly. It also offers a range of beneficial functionality, such as:

• Improved information access – Categorising information in a meaningful way can make it easier to search for, gather and retrieve. It also grows the pool of search results by automatically including closely related terms.
• Deeper meaning – Taxonomies encourage the contextualisation of information, which allows for both the search term and ingested information to be understood in a more meaningful way.
• Reduces junk information – Taxonomies can help remove junk information that is of no significance, which in turn can streamline search results and improve efficiency.

The energy industry can benefit greatly from taxonomies to improve handling information. From gleaning key insights from information to utilising metadata to streamline how searches are performed, taxonomies are an essential aspect of maintaining a well-structured level of communication across the sector.

If you’re interested in using taxonomies to your business’s advantage, Flare Solutions offers a range of Information Management Systems that can help. To find out more about our services and solutions, contact us today.

Give us a call today, and bridge the gap in your communications.