Business Glossary

Business Glossary
Photo by Edho Pratama / Unsplash

What is Business Glossary?

Business Glossary is a collection of terms and definitions used in the business world. It provides a common language for all stakeholders, including customers, partners, and employees. It helps to provide clarity around the meaning of key words and phrases used within an organisation. By making sure everyone knows what terms mean, it eliminates confusion and simplifies communication.

Benefits of Business Glossary?

A business glossary is a collection of terms used in business and related fields, along with their definitions. Business glossaries are essential for any organisation, as they help ensure that all members of the team are on the same page when it comes to key terminology. Benefits of having a business glossary include:

  1. Improved Communication: A business glossary provides a common language and understanding between employees, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. This helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page when discussing topics related to the business.
  2. Clarity of Information: Having a business glossary can help make sure that all information is presented clearly and concisely. With everyone using the same terminology, there is less chance for confusion or misinterpretation of information.
  3. Standardisation of Processes: Having a business glossary can provide standardisation of processes, as everyone is using the same terminology and understanding the same meaning behind it. This helps to streamline processes and ensure that tasks are completed correctly and consistently.
  4. Improved Efficiency: When everyone is using the same language and understanding the same meaning behind it, tasks can be completed more efficiently. This helps to reduce time wasted trying to decipher jargon or misinterpretations of information.
  5. Enhanced Knowledge Sharing: Having a business glossary can help facilitate knowledge sharing within an organisation as everyone has a shared understanding of key terminology related to the business. This helps employees better understand each other’s work and collaborate more effectively.
  6. Improved Decision Making: With a business glossary, everyone is using the same language and understanding the same meaning behind it. This helps to ensure that decisions are being made based on accurate information, rather than misinterpretations or assumptions.

Steps to create a business glossary

  1. Gather the relevant terminology – Start by gathering the terminology that you need to include in your business glossary. This can include terms from industry regulations, company-specific terms, and other jargon used within your business.
  2. Define each term – Take each term and define it clearly and concisely in plain language so that users can understand it easily. Use consistent formatting for all of the definitions, such as capitalising all words in the definition or using a certain font size for all definitions.
  3. Categorize the terms – Group similar terms together into categories to make them easier to find. For example, you could group all financial terms together or create separate categories for terms related to customer service or IT operations.
  4. Check accuracy – Have someone with a deep understanding of the terminology review the glossary and check for accuracy. This will ensure that the definitions are correct and up-to-date.
  5. Publish the glossary – Once you have a complete business glossary, it’s time to publish it so that your employees can access it easily. You can use an online platform such as a wiki or a web page to make the glossary available to everyone in your organisation.

List of Tools currently available for creating business glossary.

  1. IBM InfoSphere Business Glossary: This is a comprehensive business glossary solution that helps organizations to easily create, manage, and share a centralised business glossary across departments and applications. It includes an intuitive graphical interface for creating and modifying terms, as well as an enterprise-wide search engine for finding terms.
  2. SAP Business Glossary: This is an all-in-one solution that helps organizations to define, manage, and share information related to their business processes and operations. It provides a graphical user interface for creating, editing, and managing data objects such as terms, definitions, acronyms, synonyms, relationships between objects, etc.
  3. Oracle Business Glossary: This is an integrated business glossary management solution that enables organizations to easily create, manage, and share a centralised business glossary across departments and applications. It provides an intuitive graphical interface for creating and modifying terms, as well as an enterprise-wide search engine for finding terms.
  4. Microsoft SharePoint Glossary: This is a cloud-based solution that allows organizations to easily create, manage, and share a centralised business glossary across departments and applications. It includes an intuitive graphical interface for creating and modifying terms, as well as an enterprise-wide search engine for finding terms.
  5. Talend Business Glossary: This is a comprehensive data governance solution that helps organizations to easily create, manage, and share a centralised business glossary across departments and applications. It includes an intuitive graphical interface for creating and modifying terms, as well as an enterprise-wide search engine for finding terms.