New search technologies and clever “auto-magical” tools that help us find the information we need to do our jobs better have been the latest investments that a few clients have wanted my help with.
“… Better search results, faster across all the systems where content resides. IDOL Universal Search provides users with a simple, personalized search experience tailored specifically to their unique requirements…” (Autonomy, 2011)
“… Provides users access to an enterprise’s distributed information through a single enterprise search interface that is powerful yet simple…” (Recommind, 2011)
“… Combining the power of FAST with the simplicity of SharePoint, FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint delivers an exceptional intranet and people search experience and a platform for building custom search-driven applications… ” (FAST, 2011)
The promises that technology vendors make always sound great, but in the real world most of us know that something that great takes more effort than just ‘plug-and-play’.
The thing about search however, is that if your information is a tangled mess, the investment you make won’t help untangle that mess, which means you’ll never fully realise the benefits it is supposed to deliver. “Rubbish in, rubbish out” is an oft-used phrase in those organisations where there has been no content preparation, solution analysis or good system interoperability review before deployment.
Instead, if you take some preparatory steps to either map and hide some of the really messy content, or undertake some housekeeping on the really valuable information and knowledge you can start to see the brave new world that the vendors described:
- Undertake some initial analysis of your content and the problems you’re looking for the search engine to solve
- Plan to spend a bit of time untangling or finding new paths through your information to the really valuable content
- Design a usable and intuitive search interface that actually works for your organisation, and your content
Having done this a few times now I’ve developed a bit of a framework that allows me to very quickly come in and help organisations truly leverage the investment in search that they are about to make, or have made.
I love helping different organisations do this, so please feel free to drop me a line if you’d like to chat about this in more detail.