This document discusses the current state of enterprise search and areas for improvement. It finds that while 23% of organizations have enterprise-wide search capabilities, many others have only just begun planning or have no plans. User satisfaction with search has remained moderate over time due to low content quality and uncertainty around what is searched. The document calls for better management of information as an enterprise asset and support for collaborative search and information seeking to help teams work together more effectively.

1. Search and the digital
workplace
Martin White
Managing Director, Intranet Focus Ltd.
martin.white@intranetfocus.com
II-SDV Nice 2014
Agenda
• This is enterprise search today
• This is what search needs to be in the near future
In the beginning……
Charles Bourne 1963
Gerard Salton 1965
John Mashey 1997
Michael Pliner 1988
1972

2. Enterprise search today
www.digital-workplace-trends.com
Enterprise-wide
In some areas
Just beginning
Planning
No plans
DK/NA
23%
11%
10%
30%
22%
3%
Implementation status
From The Digital Workplace In the Connected Organisation 2014 © NetStrategy/JMC
and used with permission http://www.digital-workplace-trends.com
A six-year perspective
2010
2014
2012
2008
2008
2014
2012
2010
Very satisfied
Moderately
satisfied
11%
11%
14%
9%
46%
42%
47%
25%
From The Digital Workplace in the ConnectedOrganisation 2014 ©
NetStrategy/JMC and used with permission http://www.digital-
workplace-trends.com

3. The causes
• The main causes of a lack of satisfaction are
– Low content quality
– Uncertainty about what content is being searched
• The actions being taken to improve search include
– Metadata training
– Improving search log analysis
– Providing best bets
– User feedback
• However none of these actions adequately address the causes
From The Digital Workplace in the ConnectedOrganisation 2014
© NetStrategy/JMC and used with permission
http://www.digital-workplace-trends.com
Information management
• In 2000 the Meta Group developed an information
management maturity model
– Level 1 Aware: The organisation has no common information practices
– Level 2 Reactive: Certain departments do have approaches to
managing information assets
– Level 3 Proactive: The organisation has a significant degree of
information management maturity, led by IT
– Level 4 Managed : The business takes responsibility for information
quality
– Level 5 Optimal: Policy of continual improvement in an enterprise-
wide strategy that places information as an asset alongside financial,
material and personnel assets
Information as an asset
Optimised
Managed
Proactive
Reactive
Aware
No awareness
Majority Early adopters
1%
5%
25%
49%
26%
17%
31%
24%
27%
6% 48%
From The Digital Workplace in the ConnectedOrganisation 2014
© NetStrategy/JMC and used with permission
http://www.digital-workplace-trends.com
Networked work

4. Professor Heidi Gardner, Harvard Business School, 2013
How lawyers make money The way it has been
http://clickspice.com/xenon.htm
http://www.pcmuseum.ca/details.asp?id=38323
For a long time…!
?
www.echoditto.com

5. http://www.pcmuseum.ca/details.asp?id=38323
And even today!
Barriers
• There has been a great deal of focus on individual information
seeking
• This has led to the design of processes and technologies …
that do not support collaborative information seeking
• This is acutely problematic in setting where teams and team
work are important
MIT
CIS
• Collaborative Information Seeking (CIS) is not necessarily
about search implementation
• In a search context CIS addresses
– Identification and selection of content resources
– The construction of complex queries
– The evaluation of results
– The development of “second phase” queries
– Consideration of ranking algorithms
– Feedback on search performance
• CIS is especially useful in the domains of law, medicine,
chemistry and engineering

6. Security management
• Collaborative search tools have great potential in the
workplace
• Within a team not all members may have the same security
profile
• Issues around information protection and security need to be
implemented for the business market
Boeing

7. Cross device search
• Our early analysis of Mobile-to-Desktop switches shows that
they happen in much less time than Desktop-to-Mobile
switches
• One explanation is that Mobile-to-Desktop searches are
related to user dissatisfaction with the results from mobile
search
Microsoft
Some questions from me
• Why is there so little investment in search technology and the
people to support it?
• Why is information not being managed as an enterprise
asset?
• How effective can teams be when they can work together on
everything except search?
• Why is so little attention being paid to mobile search of
enterprise content?
• Why is the search industry not responding to the market
potential?
Some questions from you?
Martin.white@intranetfocus.com
@intranetfocus
Discount code AUTHD
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