Enhancing the value of enterprise search

In today’s corporate environment, the need to find, query and retrieve relevant data quickly and easily becomes more pronounced each day. As computer processing speed and storage capability escalates, so too does the amount of data warehoused on computer systems that needs to be accessed. That’s why, according to Gartner (February 2008), software revenue from enterprise search for 2008 will escalate to 987 million dollars (666 million euros)

The need for information retrieval technology is growing so quickly that within the next few years enterprise search will become a commodity of the corporate world. But search speed and data relevance won’t be enough to separate one search technology from the next. Greater functionality will come into play, but enterprise search systems that provide the ability to analyse search data and that track search behaviour as well as recognize search patterns, will lead the market. Search analytic tools, in particular, can help an organisation in myriad ways. They will enable employees to become more productive, improve corporate Web, Intranet and Extranet design, and also provide a valuable, actionable form of market research.

At Surfray, our enterprise search engine has always been blindingly fast. (Its Speed Index is nearly 1,800 times faster than SQL Server’s native XML Index.) It also has always had a precise relevance system, and retrieves unstructured data as easily as structured data. But it wasn’t until our recent acquisition of Mondosoft and its global customer base that the opportunity arose to integrate our search engine with the comprehensive search analytics that will soon give enterprise customers the best of both worlds: the immediate results their users require with the added insight regarding user behaviour that search analytics provides.

Why Search Matters to the Enterprise
Quick and effective decision making is crucial in the corporate world where speed is of the essence. Sound decisions, however, generally come only after evaluating and appraising pertinent information. Without the required data needed to base a decision, corporate management suffers from indecision – or worse – poor decision making. And decisions also need to be timely. Otherwise, businesses find themselves mounting lost opportunity costs. If a company lags in response to a golden opportunity, a competitor will gladly snatch it away.

Search and retrieval components that come standard with corporate content management systems and databases are wildly insufficient in meeting the needs of the enterprise. That’s why powerful search technologies have been developed and deployed to ensure that the foundation of all enterprise business decisions is laid solidly, with the right information at the right time, regardless of where that information lies. A good enterprise search solution should be able to access, index and retrieve data anywhere it is available, whether on the Internet, corporate intranets, or in databases, file and mail servers, as well as content management and other enterprise management systems.

Fast and comprehensive access to corporate data is just the start. Only search analytics can take enterprise search to the next level.

Analytics: making search work
While search speed is critical to any organisation, enterprise search analytics can boost the overall value and effectiveness of search degrees further. Search engine technology that integrates analytics provides a perspective over time on what employees, customers or site visitors seek, allowing companies to make sound decisions on what employees spend their time on and what they need to better perform their job duties. It also lends perspective to what types of products or services customers demand, or the types of information and data a site visitor prioritizes, and how such information might be more efficiently delivered.

Search success ratios
Analytics provide the element of business intelligence to search that creates better search results. Good enterprise search technologies return results to queries more than 70% of the time, but coupled with analytics, the rate goes higher, typically an additional 10 to 40%. The true test of any search is the rate at which users click through on a result and then, afterward, end their search session. Used in combination with a fine-tuned user interface, search success as defined here can reach upwards of 95%.

When analytical tracking tools are properly used, they enable those in charge of implementing and managing enterprise IT to develop the most effective search technology framework, both in terms of search effectiveness on the user’s behalf, and for the enterprise’s own corporate interests. Search analytics give organisations the fastest way to identify trends in usage, establish and gauge benchmarks based on user expectations, and provide other reports that drill down on what information is sought, retrieved and accessed. By tracking behaviour and search engine usage over time, search analytics plays a valuable role for decision makers as they shape their enterprise’s plans in areas including corporate productivity, e-commerce and market research.

Corporate productivity
Workflow efficiency and employee productivity in the enterprise can be evaluated and ultimately enhanced by use of enterprise search analytics. Corporations today rely more and more on Web-based technologies for data storage, often retaining many thousands of pages and documents. But corporate networks, intranets, mail and file servers and other technology platforms hold vast amounts of data as well. With so much information dispersed among a variety of platforms in a variety of locations, it’s not hard to see how employees can spend endless hours trying to uncover the specific information they need at a particular time.

And employees commonly use search as a navigation shortcut. Rather than drilling down layers of an intranet or file server to locate the information they seek, they go directly to an intranet’s search field and enter a query in hopes of directly retrieving what they need. More often than not, such a practice can lead an employee astray, and take him or her many times longer to discover what they’re looking for than if they had tried to access the information through conventional site navigation. In other cases, they’ll simply give up altogether trying to find what they need, or re-create and duplicate the information, making matters even worse.

With enterprise-grade search analytics, organisations can see if there are search terms that return irrelevant results, and determine which areas of an information system need to be indexed or re-indexed should available data not be uncovered. All of these areas factor into workforce productivity and, once determined, can be addressed to enhance corporate efficiency.

E-Commerce
Search analytics play a key role in helping corporations take full advantage of their online sales potential. Search data analysis can detect market trends and allow Webmasters and site administrators to reconfigure an e-commerce site as often as required to best capitalise on sales opportunities. If, for example, a sports retailer finds that hiking products are waning in popularity in late fall, but that skiing products are escalating as a search topic as the winter ski season approaches, it can immediately modify its Web pages to promote the products that customers want. Through behaviour tracking it’s also possible to recommend other products that might be of interest to site visitors based on the overall aggregation of terms and data used by previous visitors who’ve queried similar names or terms.

Search queries can simply fail because of “user error,” such as when a user types in a query but gets no pertinent results because he or she misspells the query word(s). This is particularly true in cases where consumers visit sites that offer products or services with scientific terminology, such as medical sites or ones offering products related to innovative new technologies. However, search analytics reports can identify problem areas where queries don’t provide returns, generating a list of alternative words or terms to appear to the user which likely includes what they originally intended to find. The search engine can then be easily configured to pull up commonly misspelled results. For instance, a pharmaceutical site that sells generic drugs can display their product offerings when the drug’s more commonly known brand name is searched. So when a potential customer comes to a site looking for Claritin or Advil – which aren’t there – they won’t leave the site without placing an order for a generic loratadine or ibuprofen product. Depending upon a company’s industry and market segment, this can add up to a formidable percentage of online revenue that would have been lost otherwise.

Market research
Search analytics can also add tremendous value as a data source of market research. Tracking user search behaviour gives organisations insight not only into how customers and employees interact on their sites or networks with existing data that’s been properly indexed, but also offers a view on what users expect to find that may not be available to them.

For e-commerce sites, interpreting the analytics reports can prove valuable to the sites’ marketing teams. For instance, if a music retailer finds that customers are searching for popular DVDs as often as they are for popular albums, they may choose to focus additional resources and efforts towards video products in the near future. If a recruiting consultant finds that visitors are more frequently seeking information on professional coaching rather than simply job placement, they can address that issue accordingly through new services of their own, or perhaps by allying with specialists of that field. But search analytics as a market research tool aren’t limited by market or industry. They can bolster strategic marketing decisions made by biotech corporations, developers, and law firms, too. Essentially, any business that can learn from the behaviour and practices of its employees and customers will find search analytics to be invaluable.

Enterprise search and analytics in the years ahead
As enterprise search becomes more sophisticated, users continually expect better results, whether they are a consumer surfing the Web, or a corporate employee needing to access a file before an important meeting. On both counts, a search engine integrated with search analytics will be able to meet increased demands because it is the process of fine-tuning search results that helps users find what they’re looking for faster and more easily.

At Surfray we realized that enterprises needed more than just a powerful search function to correctly access information. Enterprises value analytic reports that provide objective accounts of how data is used and accessed. From there, they can design and structure their Web sites, corporate intranets and extranets to serve the work functions of their users more effectively. By improving user efficiency and effectiveness, they will also gain a better sense of their business as they index and classify information of all types.

Indeed, search technology needs to advance faster than file storage and other content management technologies or risk becoming less effective by comparison. Still, the real advances will be made in combining enterprise search with search analytics in tight integration. Together these powerful technologies will make certain that customers and employees operate more efficiently while simultaneously ensuring that an enterprise’s business decision making is aligned with its strategic imperatives.

About Martin G. Veise
He is Chairman of the Board of SurfRay A/S, the search technology company he founded in 2001. Veise’s leadership and passion are the hallmarks of his decade-long experience in the software industry. His current focus is on fostering innovation and market leadership across SurfRay businesses worldwide.