What makes companies like Amazon, Apple, Philips, Bank of America, Microsoft or Dell so successful? They are not only among the most profitable companies in the world. They are also fast-growing companies and largely admired by allies, competitors, customers and strangers.
Targeting the right people at the right moment with the right product is key for building a business. If you are reading this article, you’re already on the right path. The next question is: how can you prepare your business for sustainable growth similarly to how Fortune 500 companies had? And we have the answer for you, keep reading.
Innovation As The Basis for Success
Most people will think that innovation is the answer to successful growth. And they are partially right. Amazon grew from a book online retailer to the largest E-commerce leader in the world mainly driven by ideas and innovation.
Since 2010, Apple has been one of the most valuable companies in the world. Kate Warne, the investment strategist at Edward Jones, says, “Apple’s $1 trillion valuation is a great reminder to investors that companies with innovative ideas combined with world-class products and service can create value for investors over time”.
Being an innovative company is great. You don’t have to be a tech company or the most disruptive company on the planet to be innovative. What you need to innovate and satisfy your customers and stakeholders is organized data.
Everyone knows that data is the new oil. While the analogy is hotly debated in the data community, the truth is that it highlights the importance of data. Most innovative companies are data-driven companies. Data fed their set of innovative ideas and, at the same time, increased their ability to react quickly to changing markets.
Organizing Your Data For Success
Data is generated everywhere and can be used to optimize everything you and your company do. You have at least the following business assets in your organization:
- Resources: like people, processes, different types of content
- Customers: contracts, email exchange, tickets, social media interactions
- Organizational capability: systems and technologies you are using and the culture of your company
Each of these assets is generating data. A greater understanding of an organization’s assets (and the data related to those assets) means that the organization can be more strategic about where to innovate and how to use innovation to quickly react to market changes.
That is why Fortune 500 companies have been using taxonomies as the building block to structure and manage critical business assets. This way, they ensure that business processes, workflows, and communications among business groups move freely. As a result, they have improved efficiency and collaboration to innovate and grow their business in a sustainable way.
Prepare Your Business For Sustainable Growth
We have already revealed the success secret of Fortune 500 companies. Now you know that taxonomies can help you organize your business assets and the data related to those assets.
Taxonomy is the hierarchical classification of business assets, such as human resources, customer relations, content, processes, etc., used to classify documents, digital assets, and other information to find and make sense of the correct information when it is needed. Its ultimate goal is to allow both customers and employees to better access and use information. This can be achieved when business assets are organized into categories and subcategories within a taxonomy.
With that said, let’s see why a taxonomy can help you improve efficiency and collaboration to innovate and how this could be reflected in sustainable growth.
Focus on your customers:
Customers have a growing demand to find information easily. Taxonomies can help you deliver dynamic and personalized information to your customers at the right moment, plus simpler navigation on end-user applications and smarter search capabilities. All of this will affect your bottom line, from a higher return on investment to increased revenue and brand loyalty. Check some interesting stats in this article from Forbes.
Support managers in decision-making:
Managers need quick access to accurate and reliable information to respond quickly to market changes. Taxonomies support Business Intelligence applications to facilitate deriving insights from disparate systems. On the other hand, managers will also benefit from finding information more easily with taxonomies.
Help employees become more efficient and faster:
Employees want to spend less time validating information accuracy and duplicating documents that already existed but were not easy to find. Taxonomies can save employees’ time by making it easier to find information. At the same time, centralized management of the information reduces the possibility of duplicate or inaccurate content. In this way, employees can invest their time in impacting the innovation of the company.
Conclusion
Most of the big players on the Fortune 500 list have had a turning point in their history that put them on the road to sustainable growth. Innovation has in many cases been this turning point. Regardless of whether data triggered that innovation or not, today it is almost impossible to innovate successfully without knowing your customer and your organization based on accurate and easily accessible data.
For years, Fortune 500 companies have been using taxonomies to organize their data to improve efficiency and collaboration to innovate, react quickly to changing markets, and grow. Now is the time to leverage your organization’s knowledge and systems with a taxonomy. Are you ready to put your business on the right track to grow?
Download our white paper What is Taxonomy Management to learn more.
