Real business value
Enterprise search can be used to extract real business value, but user satisfaction with enterprise search can often be poor. At the same time, a fresh approach to enterprise search presents many real opportunities for organisations, say speakers at the upcoming Enterprise Search Europe conference.
"For many years, search has been as a silver bullet to cope with the exponential rise in digital content created and retained in the enterprise", says Matt Mullen, Analyst at Real Story Group. "Bolting a big and expensive search tool on top of this morass is a solution that the enterprise has been sold and largely adopted. The trouble is that this often just does produce the results promised by vendors, or required within organisations that use the tools. Now there are even greater demands for real-time (or close to real-time) analysis of this internal and increasingly external data, many organisations are taking a fresh look at how they approach their strategy on search and ... (must) make decisions about how they approach these issues in the face of Big Data".
Mullen's presentation will focus on why enterprise search works the way it does, and aims to give delegates an understanding of how they can start to meet the challenges that they face in their organisation. "If anything", he comments, "I anticipate that they'll realise that those challenges are far from purely technological".
Gerard Bredenoord of Knowledge Innovations agrees. He will be telling the story of his work implementing a global search solution at 'magic circle' law firm Linklaters. "The answer will never be to 'just install' and point the solution at the content", he says. "It will always be a hard journey that combines technology, content, people and process." And, he points out, it is important to understand that investing in search is not a technology decision but a strategic direction that a firm takes.
Enterprise Search Europe takes place in London 30-31 May 2012.