How Enterprise Search Can Benefit Your Company

How much is your time worth? How much is your staff's time worth? The IDC estimates that the average worker spends 15-30% of their time looking for or recreating information they need to perform their jobs. Employees are only successful at finding that information 50% of the time, and sometimes do not have the capabilities to recreate the information needed. This impedes workplace efficiency; stalling projects, and derailing time lines. Now take that figure, and multiple it by the number of people working at your company at their current salary. How much of your competitive advantage is lost wasting payroll hours looking for things that are there, but cannot be found?

If you don't like the answer, you're in good company. Many businesses are faced with the viral production of content within their organizations, most of which isn't organized very well. 85% of content within enterprises does not fall neatly into a designated database. Emails, PDFs, graphics, documents, and video are all valuable forms of content living in unstructured, hard to search silos of cluttered content. To compound the issue, studies by the IDC and UC Berkley indicate that unstructured content inside the enterprise is growing at a pace of 90% each year.

How much of a competitive advantage would an effective enterprise search solution benefit your company?

Businesses need enterprise search to gain a competitive edge in this ocean of information. A reduction in time spent looking for information means less time and money expended on projects, meeting or exceeding deadlines, and getting products to markets faster. That translates into revenue saved, revenue earned, and a distinct market advantage for your business.

But what is enterprise search? It's a search engine specifically designed for your organization. Enterprise information often resides in unconnected systems, in a wide variety of file formats. There are literally over 200 different file formats that can exist inside an organization. It searches through an enterprise's content located on its public website(s), intranet, emails, technical specifications, internal directories, PDFs, graphics, documents, databases, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Enterprise Search results rankings are based on complex algorithms, which can be customized using elements including industry taxonomy, business rules, date, author, and other criteria. Business rules include document retention requirements, how documents are imported, authentication, access, and other concerns.

Enterprise search accomplishes many things for a business, all with very positive results. It
empowers employees to find the information they need to act quickly and decisively--increasing overall productivity. It allows customers to find your products and services on your website, reducing call center costs. And it makes the search experience less frustrating for all stakeholders: employees, customers, partners, management.