Turn inconsistent names and descriptions into the categories your organization already uses.
Appellation makes that mapping available through a simple browser tool and API. Before a version is put into use, we test it against difficult examples and alternatives, then show what performed best and where it struggled.
Results
4 values| Source value | Result | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Crude oil refining | Petroleum Refineries 324110 | Match |
| Poultry cold storage | Refrigerated Warehousing and Storage 493120 | Match |
| Electrical fixture installation subcontractor | Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors 238210 | Match |
| Sanitary wastewater treatment works | Sewage Treatment Facilities 221320 | Match |
You provide the categories. Appellation makes them usable.
Your taxonomy can be as simple as a list of category labels. Appellation builds, tests, and maintains a model that maps new values to those categories.
Appellation works with taxonomies across very different fields.
| What is being categorized | Selected taxonomy | Source value | Returned concept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business activity | NAICS 2022 | Sanitary wastewater treatment works | Sewage Treatment Facilities |
| Government procurement | Product and Service Codes | Portable site office | Prefabricated and Portable Buildings |
| Scholarly research | OpenAlex Topics | Wayfinding in virtual environments | Spatial Cognition and Navigation |
| Transactions | Plaid category snapshot | Taco Bell drive thru | Fast Food |
| Food products | Open Food Facts | Eagle Brand Condensed Milk, Sweetened | Whole condensed milk with sugar |
| Medication ingredients | RxNorm common core | acetyl salicylic acid | aspirin |
| Web content | IAB Content Taxonomy | City-building games | Strategy Video Games |
| News subjects | IPTC Media Topics | Islamic Day of Sacrifice | Eid al-Adha |
| Customs classification | WCO HS 2022 | Men's cotton shirt in woven fabric | Men's cotton shirts, not knitted or crocheted |
The live demo runs real requests against taxonomies currently available for public use.
Use it in your browser or through the API.
Enter values and inspect the results in your browser, or connect the same mapping to an existing workflow through the API.
With a general-purpose data or AI platform, your team still has to build, test, and maintain the mapping. Appellation handles that work, so each taxonomy does not become another internal software project. Your categories and underlying systems stay yours.
See how the results compare.
Each comparison gives Appellation and a specialist tool the same inputs and the same answer space. The graph summarizes five independent studies, with the wins and losses retained for inspection.
One taxonomy is often where the problem first becomes visible.
A team may arrive with one unreliable industry field, product category, transaction label, document topic, or procurement code. Elsewhere in the same organization, another team may be using spreadsheets, rules, or prompts to answer the same basic question: which approved category does this record belong to? The same mapping problem recurs across the organization, and its mistakes carry into the reports and decisions that depend on those categories.
The wrong category changes the total.
Seeing $138 in transportation expenses, a manager considers tighter limits on taxi use.
| Expense | Amount | Reported category |
|---|---|---|
| UBER *TRIP | $42 | Ground transportation |
| LYFT *RIDE | $31 | Ground transportation |
| NYC TAXI 8H52 | $27 | Ground transportation |
| UBER EATS | $38 | Ground transportation (incorrect: this is meals) |
Hypothetical example.
- Reported transportation
- $138
- Actual transportation
- $100
Check the expense categories before changing the travel policy.
Food delivery has been counted as transportation. Across thousands of descriptions and millions of records, those small errors compound throughout budgets, policies, reporting, and later analysis. The problem is not inconsistent wording by itself. It is making different things count as the same, or the same thing count as different.
Begin with the taxonomy causing the problem now.
Support for private taxonomies is being prepared. Contact us about early access if you have a taxonomy you want to use with Appellation.
A taxonomy can be as simple as a list of category labels. Examples, special requirements, and results from another tool can be included when they are available and useful.