Knowledge workers spend as much as 15% to 30% of their time searching for information, yet more than half of their online searches fail to deliver the information they are looking for. That`s according to research firm International Data Corporation, which estimates that a company with 1 000 knowledge workers wastes at least $6 million every year as a result of hours wasted on fruitless searches.
The documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases spread across your company represent years of accumulated knowledge.
Garth Wittles, District Manager, Verity in SA
It`s no secret that corporate searches seldom yield the information users are looking for - you are generally far better off running a search on Google than using a corporate search engine to find information on a company Web site. This is a situation that is untenable when you consider the critical importance of knowledge management in the new economy.
Knowledge-enabled businesses can recognise opportunities earlier and anticipate challenges before they become crises. Their employees work harder, and their customers buy more products and services. This gives them immeasurable competitive advantage.
But most importantly, knowledge-enabled businesses recognise that they already have the answers to their questions. All they have to do is give their employees, customers and partners the tools to find them.
The challenge to enterprise search providers then, is to supply companies with sophisticated, user-friendly analytics technology that does a good job of connecting users with the information they are looking for.
There are a number of solution vendors promising to address the seemingly simple problem of how to find pertinent information on the Web. Companies embarking on a search project should ask 10 questions of the vendors they are evaluating.
Prospective vendors should be able to position themselves in the market. Ask where the leading industry analysts rank them on the shortlist of portal infrastructure, enterprise search and knowledge management providers. What is their market share in this sector?
Secondly, ask what distinguishes their product architecture. What are the scalability aspects of the architecture? Does it offer a level of scalability and fault-tolerance that will keep pace with the growth of your user base, and of your structured and unstructured information assets?
Next up, a recent Meta Group survey of Global 2000 companies found that the top three key enabling features of enterprise portals were search, taxonomy and personalisation, the features that users rely on to locate information.
To enable knowledge, the people who need it in order to make critical business and purchasing decisions have to be able to find it. The next question to ask prospective vendors is whether their product can deliver these three enabling features in one modular architecture.
Your fourth question: Does the vendor provide different tools that an end-user can use to define their own search experience? Being able to locate and access the information they need enables knowledge workers to do their jobs better.
Fifth, can the vendor offer users direct input to the relevancy ranking process, and allow individual search terms to be assigned levels of importance?
Then, does the product allow you to search multiple information sources with a single query? Search technology should streamline knowledge management and information retrieval from both structured and unstructured documents. This is the point of implementing an automated search tool.
Your next question: Will you be able to specify parameters to filter and sort information? Documents that consist of mainly unstructured free text usually have associated metadata, while structured spreadsheets and databases often have columns or rows that contain unstructured text. The ability to select parameters allows users to locate and retrieve information using a combination of structured information, metadata and free text. Users should be able to sort and filter information by selecting pre-set parameters, and searching through filtered text fields and document content for specific text.
What multiple language capabilities does the vendor`s product have? Language support for the most widely spoken and written languages in the online world is essential for most big companies in today`s global economy. Support for multiple languages content yields better search results and user satisfaction. This is particularly relevant in SA with its 11 languages.
What is the vendor`s level of local support? How does it deliver this support?
Finally, ask some pertinent questions about customers and return on investment (ROI). How many customers use the vendor`s product? In which industries has the vendor made the greatest headway? Ask the vendor to explain the types of ROI the product can deliver, and to provide some customer examples of ROI.
The documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases spread across your company represent years of accumulated knowledge. The key to protecting that investment and the advantage it provides, is a search, classification and recommendation vendor that can empower your users and grow with your requirements.
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