When does an enterprise search help and what is the underlying problem? This article explains.
Table of Contents
Problem
Most employees know the frustration of searching for information in the company’s internal systems but not finding an answer. The underlying questions that employees ask themselves are always the same:
- In which system do I search best?
- What is the best thing to look for?
- Who can I ask for help?
In recent years, more and more IT systems have been introduced in companies and the data is growing exponentially. This leads to heterogeneous IT landscapes and often results in several “logically correct” storage locations for documents and information in various systems.
Over time, this leads to a certain chaos – which at some point can no longer be contained by restructuring the data sources.
Unawareness of the problem
Most employees are aware that they spend a lot of time on internal research in the company – the management not so much. At least in very few companies the search time has been recorded and they are aware of the problem.
According to surveys among our customers, commercial employees spend an average of 25-30 minutes a day on research and information gathering. In our blog article “2 frameworks for recording the time spent on internal information research“, we present 2 methods of how these figures can also be recorded for your own company and how you can develop a business case based on them.
Even in companies with 200 office workplaces, very high six-figure sums are wasted per year in order to get the right information.
Definition of Enterprise Search
Enterprise search, also known as enterprise search, is a specialised system designed to efficiently search, organise and deliver large amounts of internal company data. This system enables employees to access information relevant to their daily work, regardless of the location or file format of the data.
Using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and other advanced technologies such as NLP, an Enterprise Search searches both structured and unstructured data and presents the results in a relevant and easy-to-understand way. The goal is to help users get to the information they need to do their jobs faster, increasing productivity and efficiency across the enterprise.
Important functions
One point that many people have in mind is that the set up of an enterprise search is a large integration project with a lot of individual effort. This can be done better – in our case within half a day, as Nader el-Azabi, IT Manager at R-Biopharm AG confirms:
The connection of amberSearch was indeed as easy as originally discussed and thus enabled us to quickly activate the solution for users.
Another feature of amberSearch is that it brings the user experience that users are familiar with from the Internet into the company. We achieve this because amberSearch uses state-of-the-art AI that allows employees to ask questions in natural language.
In addition, a good enterprise search should adopt existing access rights. Access rights ensure that each employee only sees the information they should have access to. In the past, some providers only searched for information available to all employees because they were not able to adopt access rights accordingly. We manage to take over all access rights accordingly through a connection to the existing access rights management system.
Building technical understanding
From a technical perspective, a lot has happened in the field of digital search in recent years and not all searches are the same. To increase understanding of the various technologies, we have written a blog post comparing the different technologies. If you want to take the whole thing a step further and use generative AI for enterprise search, you should also read this blog post.
Test amberSearch yourself
As it is difficult for many people who come into contact with the term Enterprise Search for the first time to understand what an Enterprise Search is, we have set up a free demo with a demo data set, which anyone interested can use to see what an Enterprise Search could potentially look like. Get access to amberSearch now:
Objectives & added value of an enterprise search
The aim of introducing an enterprise search is to increase employee satisfaction and efficiency. Especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers, it is important that employees do not feel frustrated but rather enjoy working with their IT systems. In addition, an enterprise search is also a logical step on the way to a digital workplace. You can read about the other soft factors in this article.
Furthermore, the introduction of an enterprise search saves a lot of search time, as you can find out for yourself with our ROI calculator.