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Enterprise Search is Becoming More Difficult
– Finding Data is Becoming More Difficult

As the quantity of data and the venues in which it may be
generated and stored increases, finding relevant data
becomes much more difficult. While it is quite easy to find
‘data’ to support decision-making efforts, finding only the
right is becoming more difficult over time. The result is that
decision-makers either spend more time searching for
relevant data to satisfy their information requirements, or a
given amount of effort results in lower quality data as the
pool of data increases and the chance of finding the right
information is reduced.

– Most Organizations Do Not Perform Adequate Data Mining
Most organizations do not have adequate data mining
systems in place and so cannot search through their current
data stores to find necessary data to support decisionmaking
and other activities. This can create significant
problems for an organization on a number of levels:

  • User are less productive than they otherwise would be if
    they had all of the information they needed to perform
    their work. In many cases, users must re-create data that
    they need simply because they cannot find information
    that already exists in the organization.

  • Users spend more time searching for data than they
    otherwise would need to spend if they had adequate
    data mining capabilities.

  • If an organization is involved in a legal action and has
    inadequate information, a number of problems can
    result. These can include an inability to properly assess
    an organizaton’s legal position at the beginning of a
    case and the inability to respond adequately to legal
    discovery orders when necessary.

    An Osterman Research survey in early 2007 found that
    mid-sized and large organizations in North America must
    search through message archives or backups a median
    of four times each year in response to requests from
    internal, discovery or regulatory sources. This does not
    take into account the tens of thousands of searches that
    occur each day in large enterprises when users search
    for content that they need to perform their work.
– Multiple Protocols Must be Supported
In a typical enterprise, there are a large number of data
sources and systems that generate data: email, instant
messaging, CRM systems and others as noted earlier. An
intranet-focused search capability must be able to interpret
all of these data types, protocols and formats and present
them to the user in a single interface. As the number of data
types and the sheer quantity of information grows, indexing,
searching and presenting this content becomes more
difficult.

To view the full text, please download the PDF version here.


If an organization
can index and
search through
its data with a
minimum of effort
by using robust
search systems,
its data
management
efforts will be
much more
efficient. This will
result in greater
user productivity,
more rapid and
better decisionmaking,
and
greater
organizational
efficiency.