Services
Motorola Global Taxonomy and Content Management
“He’s a dynamic and energetic speaker I knew he could articulate much better than I to a Marketing community what the heck a taxonomy actually meant!”
Charlie Gray Motorola Interactive Marketing Manager of the Content Management Strategy and Implementation
Background
Imagine deploying anything – an idea, tool, software or structure – accurately and consistently across 63 countries and in 23 languages. Now imagine that implementation was not one item but dozens of branded products and accessories with options and features that varied from country to country. To add to the complexity, imagine that, once implemented, customization was to be in the hands of the local marketing and technology experts in each geography.
This was the situation at Motorola.
“Our goal was to allow people from those 63 countries and 23 languages to manage their content and maintain it across multiple business units located globally.” reports Charlie Gray, Motorola Interactive Marketing, Manager of the Content Management Strategy and Implementation. Charlie was developing a content management system in one business unit of Motorola when he was offered the opportunity to roll out a global taxonomy and content management system across the corporation and to manage all of Motorola’s websites. “A taxonomy gives you the ability to establish relationships which when implemented in a web experience allow the visitor to search on those all of those attributes.” explains Charlie “The reason for a global taxonomy was to create a global content management system for all of Motorola’s public facing websites.” Although a solid taxonomy had previously been developed, Charlie knew that to be successful with a global implementation, it would need expansion and, more importantly, a global understanding of a taxonomy and how it was used especially within the Marketing community.
Enter Earley & Associates
Charlie attended one of Seth Earley’s sessions at a prominent conference and was impressed with his talent for explaining a taxonomy, how it was used and why it was important. “He’s a dynamic and energetic speaker and I knew he could articulate much better than I to a marketing community what the heck a taxonomy actually meant!” smiles Charlie. Charlie invited Seth to present at Motorola to a large group under one condition. The session had to be titled: “Taxonomy – What the Hell Is It and Why Should I Care?” The response to Seth’s presentation was terrific. “He did a great presentation complete with compelling, relevant examples and visuals. By the end of the meeting, everyone understood the impact of not having a taxonomy on our websites. Seth crystallized the topic and its importance to the marketing professionals.” First, Seth analyzed the existing taxonomy, business needs and global environment to draft a global taxonomy structure. Then he ran a series of workshops with the subject matter experts to amend and extend the draft taxonomy and recommend a global structure. As a forethought, attributes and facets were included that would be valuable to an e-commerce implementation in the future. Seth drew on his many resources and created a customized series of Community of Practice Calls to broaden the understanding of taxonomies and content management across Motorola. During those calls individuals from other corporations shared their experiences with the taxonomy process. “Those calls were absolutely worthwhile.” exclaims Charlie “They help you realize that you are not one trying to do this stuff. Everybody feels that their situation is unique until they stop and listen to what other people are trying to do. Those calls helped people understand that should actually be working to solve these business problems in a consistent manner.”
Implementation of the Global Taxonomy Structure
A core group from around the globe worked to implement the new taxonomy structure. They were careful to include the attributes of each product, where it would be sold, product specifications, markets, customer segments and accessories. “What that means on a website is that, with those relationships defined, the web visitor can actually find the exact products that are sold in their country, and also find all the accessories that work with that particular product.” Charlie explains.
The Impact of Global Content Management System
Motorola achieved the major goal of website consistency immediately. No longer were products displayed and compared differently. They were able to source their content to deliver consistent branding, messaging and compare capabilities. The savings from eliminating duplication of effort were also immediate. “Now, individual business units around the globe are working together not separately to solve these common business problems.” Says Charlie “It’s a huge cost avoidance. The savings will be in the millions!”
Additional Benefits of a Global Content Management System
Charlie reports that tremendous synergies have also resulted from the implementation. Now when a product is rolled out, that same campaign can be used for messaging and branding and all the geographies have to co is customize it. Charlie sums up the role of Earley & Associates this way ”Seth is the intermediary – the interpreter – the translator between the IT world and the business world. His efforts and processes in classifying and clarifying the definitions of the taxonomy were the key to that translation.”