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“The business requirements for finding information are com-plex and may require a spectrum of tools that extend beyond a simple search engine,” says Susan Feldman, IDC’s Research Vice President for Content Technologies. “These tools may include easy interfaces to help tune relevance to increase online sales, reporting tools to monitor usage and uncover questions that aren’t answered, as well as extensive security.”
If your business is serious about its search strategy, you need to know the fundamental differences between searching for information on the Internet and finding the right document quickly inside your corporate intranets, public websites and partner extranets. The implications of understanding these differences, and being able to evangelize them in your enterprise, are significant. Because the cost of deploying the wrong search tools are staggering.
IDC says the average employee spends 3.5 hours every week on searches that fail to locate the desired document and another three hours every week recreating content that couldn’t be found. Over the course of a year, the salary costs alone of ineffective search are more than $9.7 million for a 1,000-employee business.1 And these numbers don’t take into account the cost of employees finding and acting on out-dated or incorrect information.
This white paper provides an in-depth look at the unique business search needs of today’s commercial enterprises and government agencies.
Specifically, the paper:
- Identifies five critical requirements that no company can afford to ignore when comparing business search and consumer search.
- Provides first-person accounts from IT professionals who com-pared business search and consumer search.
- Describes the capabilities of Ultraseek, the world’s leading busi-ness search engine.
Five DifferencesYou Can’t Afford to Ignore
Although employees frequently seek Web-like search experi-ences in their workplace, there is a myriad of reasons why the consumer tools used to search for information on the Internet have limited success for businesses.
Business is different, and its requirements are specialized, from the way information is stored to the way information is used and secured. The unique search requirements of com-mercial enterprises and government organizations highlight five important differences between business search and consumer search.
Return Role-based Results
The tasks for which employees use information vary widely, depending on their department and their role within their company.
Business Search
Business search recognizes that everyone in a company is different. This means that search relevance can be tuned to better meet the unique needs of employees in any department or level. Content can be organized to reflect the way employees view information. And answers can be returned so employees see information in the context of the question or problem they are trying to solve. This is important because when someone
in Finance searches for “hedging short positions,” they’re looking for specific information in a time-sensitive manner. What they don’t need are proposals Facilities received from landscapers to plant shrubs in front of the office.
Consumer Search
Consumer search treats all users the same. The rich linking structure—that some consumer search engines rely on to determine relevancy—pays little regard to an employee’s role or unique search needs. In essence, the more links to a page from other pages and websites, the more relevant the creators of those websites think that page is. In a business environment, this rich linking doesn’t exist. How many links are there between word processing documents, PDF files and spreadsheets on your intranet? In most corporate environments there aren’t any, or are very few.
Provide Multiple Methods of Searching
Standards for search relevance is higher in business. Employees want a single, correct answer to their information request.
Business Search
As many as 80% of all search queries in a business target documents an employee has already seen or even authored2.This means search results in the enterprise must provide more than a good answer. They must provide the right answer.
With multiple ways of searching for information, business search meets the high demands that employees have for pinpointing relevant information. An employee can find information up to 50 percent faster3 by navigating through aptly named categories. Users can also expedite the discovery of relevant information through capabilities such as advanced full-text search, federated search, spelling suggest and relevance tuning.
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