You’ve undoubtedly heard the term “metadata” bandied about recently in the press, particularly as it applies to telephone logs. But what exactly is metadata, and how can it benefit your small business?

In short, metadata is information that helps to describe some “thing”, such as a phone number or code from a recently sold product. This collection of information is usually stored in a database where there are numerous categories that relate to each other in some way. This structure facilitates finding, sorting and filtering information of interest. Books, for example, have “titles”, “authors”, and “publication date”. Telephone calls have a “calling number”, “called number”, “time”, and “length”. This makes it easy to ask simple questions like, “show me all the calls from 415-555-1234 in the past 30 days” or “how many copies of The Great Gatsby have I sold?” Continue reading →