Best Practices in Enterprise Search

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Best Practices in Enterprise SearchKM World May 2008Andy Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2   The Enterprise Search  Essay Test I decided to conduct my usual monthly interviews a little differently this time. I sent outa series of essay questions, with a certain expectation. . . .Susan Feldman, IDC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4   What Makes Search Great?Search engines are useful technologies. But to transform a technology into something. . . .Johannes C. Scholtes, ZyLAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6   Text Analytics for Enterprise  SearchAutomatic derivation of meta-information broadens search technique capabilities. . . .John McCormick, EMC Corporation. . . . . . . . . . 8   Access With SecurityTo cope with the glut of information bogging down their knowledge workers. . . . Jason Hekl, InQuira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10   Search and Content: Keys to Better Customer ExperienceInQuira recently sponsored a research project with ServiceXRG. . . .Vijay Koduri, Google Enterprise . . . . . . . . . . . 12   The Path to Universal SearchHistorically, most companies that had deployed enterprise search technologies. . . .Michael Schmitt, Siderean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14   New Equation for FindabilityAre you looking for new ways for your website to stay competitive. . . ?Jerome Pesenti, Vivisimo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16   Jump-Starting Collaboration with Social SearchOver the past several years, industry pundits and vendors have predicted. . . .Harald Jellum, Trond Lein & . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18   The New Frontier Capturing User ContextCurrently, there is a lot of innovation going on in search. Not only in technology. . . .Craig Carpenter, Recommind. . . . . . . . . . . . . 20   Search s Critical Role in Litigation PreparednessJust when the IT world is already inundated with legal terminology. . . .Ian Davies, ISYS Search Software . . . . . . . . . . 21   Search is an Iterative ProcessNavigating the fear, uncertainty and doubt that stalk the enterprise search waters. . . .Nitin Badjatia, KNOVA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22   Your Customers Can Search, But Do They Find?Oftentimes when customers come to your website, they are there to find an answer. . . .Martin Muldoon, BA-Insight . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23   Whither Enterprise Search?Enterprise search is undergoing rapid transformation. What was once seen. . . .Zia Zaman & Hadley Reynolds. . . . . . . . . . . . 24   Serious Results from Light ToolingIn the last year, a groundswell of support has started to form. . . .Matthias Weber, SAP AG. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25   Put Structured Data at Employees  FingertipsAs the pace of business accelerates, rapid access to the right facts and figures. . . .Shaun Ryan, SLI Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26   The Forgotten Search SolutionWhen you buy a new home, one of the first things you set out to do is decorate it. . . .Robert D. Guilbert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27   Five Ways to Waste a Million DollarsAfter years of false starts and uncertain strategies for knowledge management. . . .Premium SponsorSupplement toMikael Svenson, IntelliSearchFast Search & TransferUntitled Documentthisknowledgebase helps them in their jobs,but it is only a first step.James Waters:The word  enterprise inenterprise search refers to the level at whichyou can access knowledge across the company,in all its different forms and all its different locations. If you can t index and render robustresults from allthe content within the company,you shouldn t be considered as an enterprisesearch technology.Johannes C. Scholtes:With the diversityof tasks in most organizations,as well as themarket demand for better information sharingand connectivity,to claim that a one-size-fits-all enterprise search solution is the best or only choice for most organizations is justsimplynot true.When compliance became an issue,ECMwas really addressing the control and work-flow aspects of the new regulations. As aresult,compliance turbo-charged the ECMmarket. The same thing is happening now withthe information access market. E-discoverywill be the turbo, since it is completelyimpossible to bring the exploding costs of cor-porate discoveries down without informationaccess technology.AndyMoore:Searchcan be described asa universal solvent. Whatever your problemis,someone will tell you that search cansolve it. To what degree is search THE solution? Or just PART of the solution?John McCormick:Transforming contentinto intelligence is the goal. Search is an impor-tant first step in that process,but the value ofsearchis maximized when insights arederivedfrom results and applied to the business in someway. For example,when relationships amongrelevant search results are identified quickly even visually the voice of the customer canbe heard more clearly,workflows can be trig-gered automatically,competitive maneuverscan be spotted instantly,market trends can beidentified as theyemerge and even game-changing visions conceived.Jerome Pesenti:Searchdoes not solveall problems,but after all of the focus in thepast decade on content generation and man-agement,it snowtime to deploy enterprisesearch to unlock the real value out of theseinvestments.Harald Jellum:Search is a complementto case,content and document managementsolutions not a replacement. These systemshaveanumber of functionalities that searchdoes not have and will not have.The challenge with these systems is nottheir functionality,but ensuring that organ-izations use them as intended. These sys-tems require discipline in use. This is wheresearch comes in.Jason Hekl:One of our customers says thisabout search: Deploy a sophisticated searchsolution,and it slikecleaning a long-dirty win-dow. On the one hand,it s great to be able tosee outside again. Then again,the rusting jalopyin the front yardisn t that nice to look at. Pointbeing,without good content,search is com-pletely meaningless. Information is proliferat-ing,and people have less patience to filterthrough it all. Companies need the ability toharvest high-value pieces of information,regardless of their origin; the ability to makethat information accessible to various user con-stituencies; and a mechanism for determiningif the information is presented and consumedin a waythatempowers someone to act.Vijay Koduri:We are migrating toward aworld where search will be the primary formof content access. And the search engine thatoffers comprehensiveness,relevancy andextreme ease of use,along with security,willbe the clear winner in the enterprise world. Butsearch cannot create content. We ll alwaysneed content authoring and publishing tools.Search simply enables users to develop andmaintain content in whichever tool they aremost comfortable with.Andy Moore:There are plenty I d sayMOST businesses which believe that a merely OK search tool that comes more or less free with their infrastructure is good enough. Is good enough evergood enough?James Waters:People need single-pointaccess to multiple systems atthe same timeThe Enterprise Search Essay Test Idecided to conduct my usual monthly inter-views a little differently this time. I sent out aseries of essay questions, with the certainexpectation that I d get back WAY more thanIcould ever use in my two-page allotment.Wow! Was I ever right! And the content isway too good to go unused. So,I have merelyexcerpted some of the key thoughts from thismonth s group below; we ll provide the morecomplete replies on www.kmworld.com/searchwp08.Andy Moore,KMWorld:Everyone sretreating from the adjective enterprise. Thesimple explanation:there is no single vendoror technologythattruly qualifies. And of themall, search is probably thehardestto justifyas an enterprise application...isn t it?Jason Hekl:Itakeexception thatan enterprise solution must be a single appli-cation with universal appeal and applicabilityto all constituents. Largebusinesses oftenoperate from multiple silos,eachwith its owninterests and needs.More and more companies understandthe importance of a consistent,relevant cus-tomer experience; the role that search,knowledge management and analytics playin defining it; and the value of a single plat-formto deliver it.John McCormick:The requirements foran enterprise-class search engine,admittedly,aresignificant in number and scope. Some stalwart search platform vendors generate asmuch as 50% of their top-line revenues fromprofessional services. Seems likealot of heavylifting for a simple search box,doesn t it?Jerome Pesenti:Search not only needsto be ubiquitous i.e.,be embedded in alllocalized applications and work in a local-ized way it also needs to be universal andsearch across applications.People use both a primaryWeb-widesearch engine and occasionally a localizedsearch (which,by the way,they do very infre-quently due to the poor state of these tools).Whatthey really want is a single point of entryfor enterprisewide information in conjunctionwith the ability to search within an application.Vijay Koduri:Google believes stronglythat search is an enterprise application. Contact centers are a perfect example. Con-tact centersaretypically isolated,and usu-allyhaveaseparate knowledgebase forcustomer answers. Providing search forMay 2008S2KMWorldAndy Moore is a 30-year publishingprofessional, editorand writer who nowconcentrates onbusiness processimprovement throughdocument and contentmanagement. Mooreis the publisher ofKMWorld Magazineand its related onlinepublications.Moore also acts as the editorial director for the KMWorld Best Practices White Papers, overseeing their content as well as writing theopening articles for each of the white papers inthe series.Moore is based in Camden, Maine, and can bereached at andy_moore@verizon.netAndy MooreBy Andy Moore,Editorial Director, KMWorldSpecialty Publishing GroupUntitled DocumentMay 2008S3(e.g. SharePoint,salesforce.com,email). Ifyou can t hit them ALL at the same time,you re wasting your time and costing yourcompany time and money. If you are settlingfor merely OK search,you re not aware ofthe time and money and aggravation this iscausing your knowledge workers. Most applications contain a light search but Iguarantee you,the users are not happy with it.Jason Hekl:We encourage a vision ofhow the investment will allow them to create a differentiated and compelling userexperience for their customers,employeesand partners. Good enough just doesn tcut it when the objective is to create valuethrough a better customer experience.John McCormick:How many times haveyou seen a company buy a solution that was good enough, only to later buy yet anothersolution that was also deemed good enough for another problem du jour.The goodenough line of thinking often serves short-term needs,but can create mid- to long-termhavoc for the enterprise.Jerome Pesenti:The challenge forsearch is that it needs to be both ubiquitousand universal while respecting specificities.Companies have either deployed point solu-tions which can be efficient but see littleusage or deploy one-size-fits-all solutionswhichtreat all content and all users in thesame way. These are not good enough solutions unless the definition of goodenough means thatworkers still can t easilyfind and share information.Johannes Scholtes:Another considerationneeds to be mentioned:the broad availability offree personal and open-source enterprise searchtools that can perform an array of serviceabletasks for manyusers. Buyers and vendors knowthatenterprise search platform providers aregoing to struggle in a market where the goodenough part of many solutions is free.Harald Jellum:We have yet to come acrossacustomer who does not see the value in search.Thereis,however,some price sensitivitydependent on the customer sintended use.The untapping of the business potential ofsearch is not a question of implementing asimplistic and good enough searchtool,butunderstanding and addressing how the tech-nology can support their knowledge workersand business processes. This requires searchand monitoring functional and technicalexpertise that customers need in order to cre-ate best-in-class processes. We expect that wehave just seen the start of this process.Andy Moore:One of the value-propositionhallmarks of KM is that everyone has accesstoeverything, regardless of one s role,func-tion,org-chart status or most to the point access rights. How do you balance need-to-know and appropriate-to-know? Harald Jellum:This question illustratesthe need to have search technology tuned to thebusiness function of the individual user. We rec-ommend addressing the various needs throughthe search engine s relevance and prioritizationalgorithms and not necessarily through secu-rity and access control. We do not view this asan inhibitor to KM rather a way to offer pre-cise answers quickly without sacrificing otherrelevant information.John McCormick:There s no doubt:although not expressly designed to do so,agood search tool will expose the existing frailties of an organization s information infra-structure. The best approach? Rather than havethe search engine determine access rights,design the search solution to leverage the security permissions thatare in place at theapplication layer. Leaving security to the application,the search tool does what it doesbest:search.Vijay Koduri:This raises more of a policyissue than a product issue. Different companieshave varying needs of security and access con-trol; for instance,an investment bank focusedon mergers and acquisitions might haveextremely tight controls on most content,whereas a mid-sized manufacturer of widgetsmayhave far fewer requirements. The purposeof a searchtool is to supportthe varying business requirements, and to integrate appropriately with any security and single sign-on systems that the customer has.Jerome Pesenti:The firstthing peoplenotice when theydeploy enterprisewide searchis how much content is openly available.Because search can unleash much more con-tent than people might imagine,it would befoolish (atleast atthe start) to use it to bypasssecurity.Security and access control haven treallyharmed KM ecosystems so far; lack ofgood tools to find and access the content have.James Waters:If you are truly a searchexpert,your security comes first. Peoplemust choose a search solution that is simpleand easy to set up and use. MOST enterprisevendors are so complex and so heavy insecurity and other ways that the deploymenttakes months...and actually renders a bad end-user experience because it shows people stuff they cannot have!Andy Moore:As new media assets (e.g.,voice,streaming) plus new technology envi-ronments (e.g.,mobile) start to emerge asbusiness challenges,the temptation is to attackthose problems with specifically focused solu-tions from specifically focused vendors. BUT,as we all know,this kind of thing leads tosiloed,non-integrated applications all overthe place. Been there,done that.What can you tell us about your effortsto homogenize AND adapt your solutions toprepare for these specific new technologies(rich media,mobile)?Jason Hekl:Field service agents areunlikely to adopt and use a knowledgebasesolution unless they have both PC and mobileaccess; they simply will not come back to theoffice and document on their PC the issues theyran into,and look for solutions. With a mobileapplication,agents in the field can captureknowledgefrom the forums,and use theirmobile devices to recommend content to knowledgebase articles. All the elements for effective knowledge capture are at their fingertips,accessible via a mobile device.VijayKoduri:One of the coreprinci-ples at Google is focus on the user. Wenever try to dictate which technologies ormedia assets the end user should adopt.Rather,wecloselyobservewhat the end useris adopting and make sure we support it.James Waters:Multimedia and mobilearetwoof the hottest areas around. And email is growing everydayas the unofficialfile server of the companies of the world.Whereis this Word document being delivered to? Email. How will you deal withrevisions and version control? Email. Andwhere will you see this email once or twice?On your mobile PDA.Johannes Scholtes:Wehaveacustomer,GovernmentDocs.org,that gives the publican unprecedented level of access to govern-ment documents byallowing users tobrowse,search and review hundreds of thou-sands of pages acquired through the Free-dom of Information Act (FOIA) and otherpublic disclosure,or sunshine, laws.Citizen reviewers can engage in the gov-ernment accountability process like neverbefore.The goal of the database is to createacentral repository of government docu-ments,promoting greater transparency intothe inner-workings of our government. TEditor s note: Keep in mind these comments are merelyexcerpts, and in some cases regretfully truncated. For afull transcript of the essay question answers, visit:www.kmworld.com/searchwp08.KMWorldJason Hekl,vice president, corporate marketing, InQuiraHarald Jellum,CEO, IntellisearchVijay Koduri,product marketing manager, Google EnterpriseJohn McCormick,general manager, knowledgeworker business unit, content management andarchiving division, EMC CorporationJerome Pesenti,chief scientist and co-founder, VivisimoDr. Johannes C. Scholtes,president and CEO, ZyLABNorth America LLCJames Waters,vice president, global marketing, CoveoCast of CharactersUntitled DocumentN Index backup;NScalability;NAffordable total cost of ownership;NBlack belt-class customer support thatdoesn t have the meter running;NTools for adding metadata automaticallyand for normalizing relevance across different repositories; andNAfootprint,or an index size,that is appropriate for the use.The fact is,enterprise search is oftenquite complex. The technologies are poorlyunderstood and explained. And the implica-tions of having one combination of tools andtechnologies over another arenot clear tomost buyers. UnlikeWeb search,enterprisesearch makes different demands on an infor-mation access platform:for better accuracy;security; more formats; more reportingtools; more language understanding; andbetter interaction design. The design andrequirements differ with each specific use.Addto this the quandary that a simple,confined use of search can grow quickly ifit is successful,with other departmentswanting to emulate the original success. Wehear,over and over,that good search winsconverts and spreads virally within an organ-ization. Buyers therefore must consider notonlytheir immediate purchase but alsowhether it has the agility and flexibility tobe rolled out for additional uses. It must bescalable enough to accommodate unknownand unexpected caches of information inalmost any format.Case Study: Supporting CA s Tech SupportGood technical support is crucial forcompanies like CA. To many of CA s cus-tomers,technical support is the face of thecompany. Yet,technical support is alsoexpensive. And,if responses are not stan-dardized and predictable,customers may getdifferent answers to the same question some better than others.The problem:CA knew that improvingand standardizing technical support was acomplex problem. Its services organiza-tion,its distribution organization,its part-ners and its support teams all haddeveloped different information silos,andeach group viewed a problem from a different perspective. CA needed to pro-vide consistent access across all silos,legacyand Web-based applications,to allstakeholders. Sam Detweiler,vice presi-dent for CA s technical support systems,found thateven though the accepted wis-dom was to centralize all of the knowl-edgebases,the barriers to locating andmoving millions of documents,combinedwith the organizational politics of theprocess,were insurmountable. He decidedto addsearchas an umbrella layer thatwouldmask the underlying complexitywhile making it appear that all of the documents were in a single collection. The goal was to integrate search with across-CA initiative to establish a singletechnology framework for the future thatcomprises search,content management,and collaborative technologies. The trickwould be to integrate legacy applicationsand formats into this future framework.CA s support database was 30 years old. Itpreceded ODBC.The solution:Detweiler inventoried hisdata first to determine the formats and collec-tions he would have to include. Then he gotbuy-in from other stakeholders by distributinghis list of criteria and asking for comments.Before interest in the project waned,he stagedabakeoff among three contending products tofind a search engine that:NConnected to all legacy applications;NIndexed legacy and current formats with-out reformatting (IBM Bookframe .bu wikis,PDF,HTML,ODBC as wellas standardOffice and database formats);NRequired little end-user training;NProvided tools for easy UI design; andNCould be installed easilybyCA staff.What Makes Search Great?A great search solution requires more thana search engine. Search engines are usefultechnologies. But to transform a technologyinto something that is useful and approach-able,search applications must extend the basic search engine to include additional fea-tures and technologies. These might include:NTunable relevance to make results morecontextually accurate and relevant;NCategorization and clustering for browsingresults,exploring collections or doingqueryless searches;NText analytics to extract concepts; namesof important people,places and things;and their relationships to each other;NSpecialized vocabularies,ontologies andtaxonomies to remove ambiguity or toadapt an application to a particular indus-try or task; andNAdditional rich media technologies likespeech or image recognition to understandwhat speech recordings,images or videosare about,thereby incorporating these formats into the information platform.But this is still not enough to create agreat search solution. The tools and inter-faces that turn the bundle of technologiesinto a trusted,valued information accessplatform make the difference between usersflocking to or fleeing from a knowledgecenter,an intranet or a customer service por-tal. They are the face of the underlying tech-nologies that make it possible to interactwith the application,configure it,find infor-mation and use it within the daily flow ofone s work. Therefore,while a great searchsolution includes multiple features and tech-nologies,it also incorporates:NInterfaces that make information findingeasier and more intuitive;NFlexible configuration and administrativetools that provide control and visibilityinto the system while not overwhelmingthe non-search expert;NSecurity at the document and the sub-document levels,applied at either index-ing or search time;NAbility to search across legacy,currentand even future formats,including audioand video content;NConnectors to a wide variety of reposito-ries and business applications;NQuick response time;NQuick almost real-time index updating;May 2008S4KMWorldLaurent Simoneau ispresident and chiefexecutive officer ofCoveo, and isconsidered one ofthe industry s topenterprise searchexperts. Simoneauis responsible forleading Coveo sday-to-day strategicoperations andpositioning thecompany for continued success. Simoneaubrings to this position a wealth of solid businessand technical experience, stemming from hisearly years of developing and bringing to marketsome of the most innovative search products todate. Prior to his leadership role at Coveo,Simoneau was chief operating officer atCopernic, a leading desktop search technologycompany. There, Simoneau successfullyorchestrated the spin-off of the company senterprise search division in 2004 into what isnow Coveo. Laurent SimoneauBy Susan Feldman,Research VP, Search and Digital Marketplace Technologies, IDCUntitled DocumentMay 2008S5Detweiler installed three search enginesand measured them for:NAccurate relevance ranking;N Ease of configuration;NAbility to connect to CA s legacy databases;N Time to load; andN Time to search.The search engines were all tested on thesame set of 25 million documents indexedfrom a variety of sources and document for-mats. All three retrieved documents in lessthan a third of a second,  although theanswers appeared in different orders in thetop two pages of results. Where they differedwas in their ability to load old ODBC data-base data. One search engine informed himthat he would have to turn the data into anXML flat file feed to make it indexable.In contrast, Coveo was up and running ina week with no training required. Detweilerjust downloaded the application. The ODBCdriver was a standard feature. Coveo alsocame in at the top in configurability.Although DB2 outputs uppercase namesonly, Coveo let him define the body versusthe metadata with an easy XML configura-tion tool. In six hours, he had loaded 1.6 mil-lion documents.The benefits: Once the documents wereloaded, Detweiler discovered that he couldrefine the search output as part of the con-figuration. In a half hour, he had defined themetadata he wanted to display in the results,including author, customer, address, operat-ing system, products and was up and run-ning. There was no need to learn specializedcommands.   Appropriate   analytics   andreporting just automatically appeared. Theseinclude a number of product issues aboutwhich customers have asked. Reports can bequickly and easily exported to an Excelspreadsheet in a couple of minutes. There sno need to ask a database expert to write ascript. Once the data is in Excel, CA ana-lysts can sort it and analyze it. If they wantto add another parameter, they don t need toreindex the entire database. The ability toexport into Excel saves the product teams time. It was an unexpected feature from asearch engine. Detweiler says that in addi-tion to the cool tools, he likes the fact thatyou don t have to do any programming: Allyou have to do is type. Users are pleased, too. No training isnecessary. The interface, with its browsingcategories and drill down ( refine by ), wasso intuitive that it won over partisans forother products. The application fits itself tothe user, he says, rather than requiring thatthe user adapt to the application. While usersare usually indifferent to new software appli-cations, that isn t the case with this applica-tion. Detweiler was careful to engage hisconstituents before he rolled out the appli-cation. In return, it has been greeted enthu-siastically.Today at CA, Coveo is installed on threeWindows servers: two for production andone for development. CA updates the indexnightly and mirrors the updates by region.Every half hour, changes trigger an incre-mental update. Coveo lets CA set differentupdate policies for each information source.CA has indexed 2.5 million documents andwill add another 13 million from its archives.The company also believes that an additional10 million documents are lying around. Detweiler says CA will easily reach 25 mil-lion documents, which will probably takehim two days to load. The company has justformed a governance committee to prioritizewhich data to load first.Now that Coveo has been deployed fortechnical support, it is supported by CA s ITorganization, and it will also become thecompany s intranet search engine. Detweilersays people are lining up at his door to inputtheir data. Facilities and asset managementwant to input their data to search it and alsobe able to export and analyze it. Use hasgrown well beyond the original objective.And then there are the unexpected bene-fits the intangibles like uncovering unex-pected usage data or like finding that bothadministrative and search interfaces helphim sell users on search.IDC s ConclusionIn several IDC case studies in 2007,Coveo proved that excellent search and nav-igation can be affordable and easy to imple-ment. The company has established a trackrecord of outstanding customer service thatsolves the unique problems of each of itscustomers. Customers refer to downloadingand trying out Coveo as amazing and an enlightening experience.   Features andprice are often the starting points for search-ing for a search platform. However, accord-ing to Coveo s customers, usability, ease ofdeployment and configuration, and aboveall, Coveo s warm, supporting relationshipwon these deals. TThis abstract was taken from the original IDC white paper Searching for Search: Can It Be Delightful? sponsored byCoveo in January, 2008. A complimentary copy of the full IDCwhite paper, which includes additional case studies, can bedownloaded from Coveo here: www.coveo.com/Feldman.KMWorldCoveo prides itself on ease of installation and deployment, UI features, browsing as well as search andconnectors to a long list of enterprise applications. Thesefactors are all true, but the overriding impression IDCreceived from Coveo s customers in interviews that weconducted in late 2007 was that, after Coveo was on theirshort list, the superb customer service, both before andafter the sale, was what won them over. Customers typically discovered Coveo late in their search for a searchengine. The company is less well-known than many of itscompetitors, although it has more than 600 deploymentsacross the major verticals. However, with a full versionavailable free to download for 30 days, prospects whohave been overwhelmed with the complexity of thesearch for search often feel that being able to experimentwith a product themselves lets them get a feel forwhether it will suit their needs. They can determinewhether the product has the features they will need afterthe sale and implementation have come to an end andthey are faced with administering it. Today, the market isfurther confused by free search engines that offer a limited set of features along with quick installation. Incomparison, Coveo customers were surprised not just atthe speed of download and deployment but also at thewealth of features that made it easy and quick to connectto all kinds of applications and repositories, extract metadata, configure, and start searching. These featuresdistinguish a favorite tool from merely a respected one.The Coveo ExperienceUntitled Documentother search techniques. However, a lot ofinformation that may be vital for them toknow may not come to light using only thesebasic search techniques. If, for example, auser s search is related to fraud and securityinvestigations,(business) intelligence,or legalor patent issues, other searching techniquesare needed that support different sets of issuesand requirements, such as the following:Focusing on optimized relevance. Thefirst requirement of broader search applica-tions is that not only does the best documentneed to be found, but all potentially relevantdocuments need to be located and sorted ina logical order, based on the investigator sstrategic needs. Popularity-based resultsgenerated by Internet search engines cannotsupport these criteria. Consider all the crim-inal elements that have vested interests inkeeping themselves and their activitiesanonymous. Many of these people under-stand how basic search engines work andhow to minimize their exposure to thesesearch mechanisms so that they don t appearat the top of results lists.Handling   massive   data   collections.Another issue impacting effective strategicsearching is how to conduct extensive searchesamong extremely large data collections. Forexample, if email collections need to be inves-tigated, these repositories are no longer giga-bytes in size; rather, they can be a terabyte ormore. When handling this volume of data,plainfull-text search simply cannot effectively support finding,  analyzing,  reviewing andorganizing all potentially relevant documents.Finding information based on words notlocated in the document.In this context,con-sider investigators who may have some pieceof information concerning an investigation butdon t necessary know other details they maybe looking for. Who is associated with a sus-pect? What organizations are involved? Whataliases are associated with bank accounts,addresses,phone records or financial transac-tions? Traditional precision-focused,full-textapproaches are not going to help users findhidden or obscure information in these con-texts. The searching framework must take intoaccount additional information, which can beobtained by using text analytics to extractmeta-information from the original documentto provide other insights.Defining relevancy.  When  defining  asearch s relevance, all factors that could be inplay during a specific search instance must beaccounted for (in the context of overall goals).Using the investigative example again,considerpossible involved parties and what relevance would mean to their actual search:N Investigators want to comb documents to find key facts or associations (the smoking gun );N Lawyers  need  to  find  privileged  orresponsive documents;N Patent lawyers need to search for relatedpatents or prior art;N Business intelligence professionals wantto find trends and analyses; andN Historians  need  to  find  and  analyze precedents and peer-reviewed data.All of these instances require not onlysophisticated search capabilities but also dif-ferent context-specific functionalities for sort-ing,  organizing,  categorizing,  classifying,grouping and otherwise structuring data basedon additional meta-information,including doc-ument key fields, document properties andother context-specific meta-information. Uti-lizing this additional information will require awhole spectrum of additional search tech-niques,  such as clustering,  visualization,advanced (semantic) relevance ranking, auto-matic document grouping and categorization.New Expectations for Search PerformanceThe insights mentioned above have beenconfirmed by various scientific research. Forinstance, during the TREC 2007 (http://trec-legal.umiacs.umd.edu/) legal conference, pre-sented studies concluded that traditionalkeyword and Boolean searches (such as thosefound in Internet search engines) resulted inT ext Analytics forEnterprise SearchThe Essential Components for High Performance SystemsAutomatic derivation of meta-informa-tion broadens search technique capabilitiesand can improve results up to 400%.When ZyLAB was founded in 1983, full-text retrieval was a new technology whoseapplication and relevance in the marketplacewas untested. Although its basic algorithmsoriginated in the 1960s, full-text search wasstill not broadly viewed as a trustworthyenhancement to traditional key-field search-ing on meta-information (i.e. informationabout information in a file). Acceptance ofthese new tools was slow to materialize andonly came about after heavy market evan-gelism by some early adapters who envi-sioned the future potential of these tools.But as we know, perceptions change fastin technology. By the late 1990s,  theincreasing capacity of computers and fur-ther sophistication of search algorithmsenabled Internet search engines to realizethe powerful potential of full-text search.Full-text retrieval had become the de factostandard for search, and, perhaps as a result,a lot of people no longer felt there was aneed to add and search additional metadata.Beyond the Google StandardNow, an entire generation of tech-savvycomputer users exist whose expectations andperceptions of full-text search functionality andperformance are almost completely influencedby the Google effect. In most instances, thistype of approach works fine if users only needto find the most appropriate website foranswering general questions. Users type infull-text keywords and expect to see the mostrelevant document or website appear at the topof a result list. Page-link and similar popular-ity-based algorithms work very well in thiscontext.But problems arise when users view thissearching model as the default approach tofinding any kind of information. People whohave become conditioned to viewing searchthrough the prism of Google-type approachesoften are not interested in, or even aware of,May 2008S6KMWorldDr. Johannes C.Scholtes is thepresident and CEOof ZyLAB NorthAmerica LLC and isin charge of ZyLAB sglobal operations.Since Scholtes tookover the leadershipin 2002, ZyLAB hasenjoyed double-digitexpansion as well asconsistent annualgrowth inprofitability. Before joining ZyLAB in 1989,Scholtes was an officer in the intelligencedepartment of the Royal Dutch Navy. Scholtesholds an M.S. degree in Computer Sciencefrom Delft University of Technology (NL) and aPh.D. in Computational Linguistics from theUniversity of Amsterdam (NL).Dr. Johannes C.ScholtesBy Dr. Johannes C. Scholtes, President and CEO, ZyLAB North America LLCUntitled DocumentMay 2008S7only 20% of all present,relevant informationbeing found. Again,for many common usages,finding the best 20% of documents is usuallyenough,but if need dictates that all potentiallyrelevant documents must be found,20% isn tgoing to get the job done.(This result is in line with the findings of theseminal Blair and Maron study in the 80s.Here,highly qualified lawyers and paralegalsthought they had found 75% of the relevantdocuments in a specific case,but the reality wasthat they only found 20%. One could concludethat the performance of Boolean keywordsearching has not improved in 30 years.)At TREC 2007,many universities also gavepresentations in which specific advanced searchtechniques offered better results; in some cases,40% of the relevant documents were found. Allof these new techniques used derivation andsearched on additional (automatically) extractedmeta-information from advanced text analyticsengines. Individually,none of them provided a perfect solution,but a combination of thesetechniques could result in an 80% success ratefor finding all relevant documents. Clearly,thecritical factor in advanced contextual searchingis the meta-information derived from automatictext analytics. Of course,data enrichment cannot beperformed manually,as was the case 20years ago,and still provide any kind ofviable solution. Rather,new techniques instatistical and linguistic analytics have givenmodern investigators whole new arsenals ofsearch tools. Text analytics,text mining andautocoding techniques enable the followingfunctions to be automated and integratedinto high-performance search capabilities:N Document property extraction;NFile property extraction;NConcept extraction;NSemantic expansion;NAutomatic summaries;NMachine translation;NEntity extraction;NFact extraction;NExact and near-duplicate detection; andNRelated document groups.These functions are impressively accurate,and with basic computer equipment users caneasily process up to 300Mb of data per hour(about 150,000 text pages). After documentsare tagged and organized,advanced interactivesearch techniques can be used to perform activities such as:NAutomatic generation of table of contentsand folder structures;NSearch folders;NSemantic relevance ranking;NClustering;NVisualization;NReporting;NAuditing; andNAutomatic generation of a chain of custody.With these new search methods in place,structured,enterprise solutions can be deliveredinwhich text analytics tools tie together all ofthe appropriate functionality into the right con-text. Benefits derived from these applicationsinclude:NStructure added to unstructured data,acritical component for business intelli-gence,legal,law enforcement,publishingand many back-office environments;NAdvanced search capabilities,includingadditional forms of relevance ranking suchas semantic orderings and clustering;NDe-duplication (exact and near) in legalapplications;NDetection of privileged,responsive andhot documents;NStructured productions and disclosures;NContent-based archiving; andNContent-based workflow and documentrouting in back-office and customer service applications. TThe combination of cutting-edge search and text miningtechnology for paper, email and electronic files, in com-bination with content management technology such ase-discovery and e-disclosure management, redaction,workflow, federation and compliant records manage-ment has continually positioned ZyLAB as a leader forthese types of applications. Effectively focusing on nicheshas enabled ZyLAB to offer its 7,500 installations world-wide a cost-effective, long-term solution for their searchrequirements that is fully embedded in their daily businessprocesses and easy to deploy and to maintain.Additional information can be found at www.zylab.com.KMWorldA great example of an application that puts into practice all of the technologies mentioned in this paper is ZyLAB s ZyIMAGE Analytics Server. This tool addresses the needfor a comprehensive solution that provides a combination of both basic unstructured searchand sophisticated structured capabilities for browsing, navigation, searching, visualizationand reporting techniques for large data-collection analysis. Specifically, structure can automatically be added as a background job to unstructured collections without having tomanually read or review documents, which enhances overall efficiency, optimizes performance and saves tremendous amounts of money and time.The ZyIMAGE Analytics Server is a component of the ZyIMAGE Information Access Platform (IAP), an award-winning integrated document, content and records managementsolution that enables professionals across a variety of market segments to capture, investigate, structure and disclose information in an efficient and secure manner. ZyIMAGE IAP also offers these users specific capabilities for process functionality, relevancy modeling and flexible content analytics. All of these features are supported byZyIMAGE s robust search capabilities and XML-based archiving framework that, together,operate as a solid foundation upon which to carry out a number of specific applications:NE-discovery and e-disclosure;NCorporate compliance and contract management;NCase management and litigation support;NDatarooms;NBack-office records management for organizations facing legal risk, such as construction, outsourcing, customer service, medical, or HRM environments;NFederal and local government records management; andNHistorical files.ZyIMAGE IAP is optimized for these applications due to a unique combination of searchtechnology, security and business-focused content-management functionality. ZyLAB canquickly deploy even the most complex installations of specialist solutions and provide allthe necessary training, documentation, support and maintenance. Unique yet affordabletext analytics are available that support more than 200 languages and can be easily implemented on a scaleable level, an important approach for specific applications suchas e-discovery.In short, ZyIMAGE IAP provides:NA complete solution to capture, find, analyze, structure and distribute data;NThe ability to perform large, time-critical investigations with fewer resources;NSupport for efficient and consistent reviews processes;NA realistic, nuanced approach to finding specific information: ZyIMAGE finds whatother systems cannot without getting bogged down in irrelevant information;NA framework enabling controlled information sharing; optional redaction capabilities;NA fine-tuned system that fully supports data protection and privacy regulations;NOpen, secure, long-term XML-based archiving of records;NExtensive auditing and reporting options;NFull integration capabilities with Outlook and SharePoint; andNEfficient, knowledgeable professional service.With ZyIMAGE IAP you can bring knowledge management in house, take the mysteryout of e-discovery and bring order to your records management initiatives.ZyLAB s Text Analytics and Enterprise SearchUntitled Documentquery structures. The security that each ofthese solutions provides also varies.Traditional enterprise search. Tradi-tional standalone search solutions crawlinformation sources to create a static,mas-ter index comprised of the informationsources individual indexes. This approachcreates problems and limitations. First,indexinformation from the application layer mustbe duplicated in order to create the masterindex. This master index,consisting of dupli-cate data,usually becomes quite large veryquickly,requiring significant IT resources tomanage the burgeoning master index andincreasing costs. Also,the master index doesnot instantly reflect changes made to theapplication index,resulting in incompleteand/or outdated search results. Most impor-tantly,to minimize latency and optimize per-formance,these solutions bypass securitypermissions residing at the application layer,creating substantial security risks.Federated search.Federated search solu-tions leverage the indexes and security mech-anisms that reside at the source level,providingcomplete,up-to-the-minute search results without compromising security. Compared tothe traditional approach,a federated approachis more secure,more effective,much quickerto implement and far less expensive to main-tain,delivering a faster return on investmentwithout compromising security.The security advantages of the federatedapproach over traditional enterprise searchapproaches are many. The federatedapproach can work with multiple securityschemas and reuses application indexes.Federation relies on application-specificadapters to support a wide variety of secu-rity and authentication mechanisms. If theadapter framework is extensible,whichrequires that it be standards-based,then theframework s software development kit(SDK) will enable the rapid development of adapters to fit new applications. With federated secure search,there is no securityprotocol emulation,no reindexing of infor-mation,and therefore no duplication ofindexed content. Finally,federation enablesIT departments to deploy a secure searchsolution without modifying or upgradingapplications.By contrast,a search platform that takesa crawling approach breaks the securitymodel of each application it indexes in orderto generate its master full-text index. Thesolution recreates or tries to match as bestit can the security model for each objectin the master index in order to ensure thatthe search solution is not utilized as a mech-anism to bypass security controls withinindividual business applications. However,such solutions do not name application-levelusers along with their associated securitypermissions,allowing users to access infor-mation that they would not have permissionto access at the application level. This is asignificant security gap.In addition,the index of a traditionalsearch platform does not instantly reflectchanges made to application-level securitypermissions. Such security updates regardless of their importance usually areadopted by the search platform on a sched-uled basis,providing additional opportuni-ties for inappropriate access.Secure Search What to Look ForWithin the market of search solutionsthere is much variance on the issues of secu-rity,access and cost. Adopting the right solu-tion is critical. When choosing a securesearch solution,both the overall architectureof the search technology and specific fea-tures should be considered.Reuse of existing assets.Choosing asolution that reuses existing assets is impor-tant to the solution s success in the enter-prise. The solution should reuse the nativeindexes of each source being searched ratherthan duplicating security permissions into amaster index,which unnecessarily increasesregulatory and legal risk. The solution alsoshould leverage the built-in search featureof every application being queried so searchresults are always current and reflect eventhe most recent changes made at the source.From a security standpoint,the solutionshould respect the application-based secu-rity permissions and return results that areappropriate for a user based on his or herrole and associated security permissions atthe time of the query. In other words,thesolution should return results that are iden-tical to those the user would have generatedby connecting directly to and searching theinformation source.From an efficiency perspective,makesure the solution provides a single sign-on(SSO) API that integrates seamlessly intothe enterprise security infrastructure. Thesolution should pass authentication infor-mation to appropriate sites as part of thequery, avoiding repetitive login steps.Beware of search tools that claim to haveSSO,but that accomplish the same result byAccess With SecuritySafely Improve Knowledge Worker Efficiency with Secure SearchTo cope with the glut of information bog-ging down their knowledge workers,organ-izations have turned to large-scale searchplatforms. But knowledge workers,whorely on information to perform their jobs,continue to struggle to find relevant infor-mation at point of need. They often waste agreat deal of time and energy inefficientlysearching the vast amount of informationavailable to them both inside and outsideof the organization. IDC estimates the costof this time at more than 14,000 per workerper year and the cost of futile searching bythese same workers at more than 5,000 perworker per year.1While many search solutions are avail-able that make finding information easier,these solutions can also introduce securityissues. For example,individuals searchingcorporate file shares may find themselveswith access to information they were neverintended to have,such as drug formularies,business plans,personal identity informa-tion,health records,financial data,con-tracts,legal agreements and others. Theconsequences of this inappropriate accesscan range from the harmless to the disas-trous and can include theft,extortion,stolen intellectual property,lawsuits,regu-latory sanctions,lost revenue or even dam-age to the corporate brand.The challenge of access versus securityis complex organizations are strugglingwith the need to keep information accessi-ble to those who need it while protecting itfrom being compromised. To keep pace,organizations need to provide their knowl-edge workers with a simple and scalableway to find and access content across mul-tiple information repositories,while pre-serving critical authentication and securitymechanisms to manage that access.Approaches to SearchThe search market has responded to thischallenge with several very different solutionsto the access dilemma some better than oth-ers. In the absence of industry-wide standards,these solutions offer different linguistic stan-dards,access protocols,terminology,andMay 2008S8KMWorldBy John McCormick,General Manager, Knowledge Worker Business Unit, Content Management and Archiving Division, EMC CorporationUntitled DocumentMay 2008S9passing cookies,as this method raises secu-rity threats.Source and content adaptation.Com-prehensive federated search solutions willinclude a large number of pre-packagedadapters for various information sources andthe ability to build new ones. Customizationof these core adapters or the creation of addi-tional adapters for packaged or customizedapplications should be able to be easilyaccomplished by an organization s IT staffand should not require significant add-onservices from a vendor or third party.It is also important that search solutionshave the ability to adapt to content,contextand structural changes because informationsources often change the way they presenttheir results pages. The solution should be ableto identify and classify all changes withouthuman intervention,and repair itself in orderto perform the correct extraction of metadata.Content enablement.A search solutionis only as good as the results it provides. Butjust as important as the results is the way theresults are presented to the end users. Acomprehensive solution will de-duplicateresults,rank them by relevancy and clusterthem automatically and dynamically,basedon metadata. Solutions also should have theability to perform cross-lingual queries inother words,queries are formulated usingthe preferred language and the search solu-tion translates the query into other languageson the fly,based on the source requirementsbefore performing the search.Complete,accurate search results should bepresented in a convenient manner and shouldbe able to be used with automated actions,suchas posting to team collaboration workspaces,integrating into business processes or sendingnotifications. While generating relevant searchresults is critical,the presentation of thoseresults also is vital to ensure the usability of thereturned information.Most knowledge workers today findtremendous value in both internal and exter-nal (Web-based) information sources. Instriking contrast to traditional solutions,acomprehensive federated solution will havethe ability to aggregate and cluster result setsfrom multiple internal and external infor-mation sources. Make sure,therefore,thatthe solution can merge results from bothinternal and external sources.Securely Improving Business PerformanceWhen the right federated search solutionis implemented,organizations can keepinformation secure while improving busi-ness performance.Product development.Utilizing feder-ated secure search to help research,developand launch new and updated products in ever-shortening cycles can help organizationsin industries such as pharmaceuticals,aero-space and high-tech avoid the hundreds ofthousands to millions of dollars of lost ordelayed revenue that can result from a sin-gle day of delay. Time matters.Enterprise search gives clinicians andother product developers single-queryaccess to myriad information sources with-out the disruption of various search tools,security controls and retrieval mechanisms.Business performance can be improvedthrough the ability to consider similarresearch which may be in heterogeneousinformation sources; accelerated researchand development results through reuse ofdevelopment capabilities and expertise;improved competitive position through useof third-party competitive informationproviders; and the ability to keep pace withchanging regulatory requirements duringproduct or service development.At the same time,the security mecha-nism of each searched application is invoked(seamlessly to the user) in order to ensureinformation security. For example, aresearcher reviewing drug trial informationwould not see the personal information ofthose participating in a study.Customer support and case management.Call center and government case managementpersonnel face increased pressure to act as lessof a problem solver and more of a strategicadvisor. But at the same time,they often lackthe necessary information and decision sup-port systems that will enable them to demon-strate subject and content mastery.An enterprise search solution enables cus-tomer support representatives to improvetheir knowledge of complex and rapidlychanging product or service features andfunctions without expensive and time-con-suming training. It can provide a consolidatedview of all customer interactions that go wellbeyond traditional support issues,whileensuring that only the information the repre-sentative is authorized to see is available.Government organizations benefit throughthe ability to provide integrated case man-agement and improved customer service tocitizens,while again providing a customerservice representative,for example,with onlythe appropriate authorized information. T1 Filing Information: April 2006, IDC #201334, Volume 1, The Hidden Costs of Information Work More information on EMC Documentum ECI Services isavailable www.emc.comKMWorldEMC offers a secure federated search solution that enables queryingof all content sources inside and outside of an organization via a singlesearch box. EMC Documentum Enterprise Content Integration (ECI) Services makes enterprise content accessible with a single query no matter where it resides.ECI Services is based on the concepts of reuse, adapt and enable. The solution reuses existing indexes, security permissions, metadata and business logic, while leveraging not disrupting the current IT infrastructure.ECI Services adapts to content, context and structural changes to informationsources and includes a large number of pre-packaged adapters for variouscontent sources as well as the ability to easily customize existing adapters or simply build new ones usually without changing or writing any code. And ECI Services presents complete, accurate search results in a convenientmanner that can enable automated actions, such as posting to team collaboration workspaces, integrating into business processes, or sending notifications, all while respecting the access permissions of the knowledgeworker for the information.ECI Services searches remote information sources using the access rightsof each individual user. ECI Services fully manages authentication and authorization mechanisms to meet specific security requirements in the context of federated search. It also provides default support for RSA andSiteMinder Single Sign-On and extensibility to support other products andframeworks. ECI Services offers pluggable authentication modules from userauthentication up to adapter authentication. It delivers an API to create custom authentication providers, enabling authentication using a one-timelogin token, a PIK certificate or LDAP information. Integrating ECI Servicesinto a single sign-on environment provides a robust security framework.The EMC Approach to Secure SearchUntitled DocumentPersonalized and IntelligentAs a product owner or services user,cus-tomers know that companies have a certainamount of information about who they are,what products they have purchased,whichservices they are regularly using and their pastinteractions with the company. When con-ducting a search especially technical-,sup-port- or account-related queries customersexpect that their history with the company willbe reflected in the results they receive.By tapping into their transactional and profile information,the enterprise searchexperience becomes more personalized andintelligent.NPrecise answers.Search results include in-formation relevant only to the products orservices the customer owns or uses. Whensearching for print drivers, rather than re-turning results that will direct to the mainprint driver download page,deliver an ex-perience that is specific to the printer thatthey own with direct access to download thedriver that they need.NDynamic navigation.Search results are cat-egorized for quick filtering. When returningresults for print drivers, users can jump toresults found in products, downloads, technical support or company informa-tion to quickly find the type of informationthey are looking for.NQuery suggestions.Query keyword andphrase options are provided based onwhat is being entered into the search box.As a customer starts typing print driv-er... options such as print driver down-load and print driver troubleshooting appear below the current typed term andcan be selected to easily refine a query todeliver appropriate results.More Than Matching KeywordsGeneral Web search is exploratory users want to be directed to the right place. Once on a company s site,though,searcherstend to be action-oriented and specific. Theright search experience understands what acustomer is trying to accomplish andenables decision-making. It does not delivera laundry list of results that do not providethe customer with an answer or action.For example,a business traveler going toSan Francisco wants to ensure that he willhave cell phone coverage near his hotel. Whensearching for San Francisco coverage, thecustomer receives multiple pages of resultsthat include the key words San Francisco and coverage. The results include a link forevery office the provider has in the San Fran-cisco bay area,links to coverage options andcalling plans,news about activities in SanFrancisco and on the third page of results provided that the customer has made it thisfar is a link to their coverage map for SanFrancisco. While the company did providesearch,it did not provide the right experience.The information shared was irrelevant to thecustomer s query and did not provide him theanswer he needed to check his coverage. Itwas a failed experience for the customer anda missed opportunity for the company.Making ConnectionsSearch and Content: Keys to a Better CustomerExperienceInQuira recently sponsored a research proj-ect with ServiceXRG that examines the consumption and supply sides of onlineshopping and service experiences.1One ofthe key findings in that study is that morethan 71% of respondents claimed they reliedon company websites for key information,yet just 44% reported having a good cus-tomer experience. I think this represents ahuge opportunity for businesses,particu-larly for those companies that invest inenterprise search technology.If I were to take a moment to think abouthow and why I use search,there are pronounceddifferences between my more general Websearches,and the searches I do on companywebsites. General Web searches,the type I typ-ically use Google for,narrow the universe ofinformation into a few good haystacks of infor-mation. I expect Google to deliver me to the righthaystack,to put me in the vicinity of the infor-mation I need. Once on the right haystack,though,I ve got to find that needle within it. My needs are more specific,my expectationsgreater. I need the search engine to connect mewith the information I need to act.I sense an opportunity for companies thatappreciate the different behaviors for Internetsearch and site search. When companies stopthinking of search in terms of keyword-matched Google-like lists,and more in termsof how search can be a business enabler,theexperience will improve and consumers willfind the online shopping and service experi-ences far more satisfactory. Customers expectenterprise search to be precise,accurate andnot require a lot of work. Customers demandreal answers and action,not just links to pagesof content that require further searching to findthe right information. Most companies havesearch functionality on their websites; howeverthe experiences they are providing might notbe influencing customers in a way that is bestfor the company. For a positive customer expe-rience,enterprise search must be intelligent,intent-driven and integrated with companyknowledge.May 2008S10KMWorldJason Hekl joinedInQuira in February,2004, with morethan 10 years ofenterprise softwareexperience in bothstartup and largecompanyenvironments. AsInQuira s vicepresident ofcorporate marketing,Jason is responsiblefor all corporate marketing initiatives, includingdemand generation, messaging and marketingcommunications. He is a frequent speaker andauthor on marketing, customer service andknowledge management topics and haspublished articles in DMNews, KMWorld,CRMGuru.com and Customer Inter@ctionSolutions. Prior to joining InQuira, Jason heldpositions in product management, alliances andsales at Siebel Systems and InSystemsTechnologies.Jason HeklBy Jason Hekl,Vice President of Corporate Marketing, InQuiraBasic keyword search resultsUntitled DocumentMay 2008S11To be effective,enterprise search appli-cations must detect customer intent todeliver the most compelling search experi-ence. An intent is the specific answer oraction that a customer is trying to achieveand is often described in multiple ways. Acustomer searching for mortgage research, mortgage lenders and Bank of Americamortgages is not intending to see how manypieces of content on the website mentionthese words. The customer s intent is to findinformation on the different types of mort-gages available and be able to submit a loanapplication.Using more specific queries, or asequence of search and navigation behavior,will generate more targeted responses. Thisis also true in other business contexts,like acustomer attempting self-help on a supportportal,or a call-center agent resolving a cus-tomer problem. Under these latter scenarios,user needs are more defined,their expecta-tions greater,their urgency in arriving attheir solution higher. Because a single intentcaptures the meaning of many uniquelyworded questions,the appropriate,targetedresponse can be delivered to customers withminimal effort from an organization todefine and administer tailored responses tothe majority of search requests.Let s revisit the previous example,buttaking into consideration the customer sintent. In this instance,when the customersearches for San Francisco coverage, thesearch application is able to determine hisintent based on the entire phrase heincluded,not just match the phrase word-for-word in the search. When the resultsfrom the search are returned,instead ofgetting multiple pages of links,the cus-tomer receives one page that includes theprovider s coverage map. In this experi-ence,the customer finds what he needsimmediately without multiple clicks orfrustration. The customer is delighted andwill remember this positive experience inthe future especially when he comesacross other sites that are only providing ageneral search experience.Search is Only as Good as theInformationGood search is meaningless without goodcontent. Search and knowledge managementare flip sides to the same coin in business con-texts where decision-making depends on accessto the right information. Knowledge manage-ment provides a centralized repository of up-to-date information and answers that enterprisesearch can pull from when delivering customerresults. As a living,breathing application,knowledge management captures the explicitand tacit knowledge held by subject matterexperts. When new issues arise or frequentproblems are formally addressed,employeesare able to create new knowledge that canquickly be made available for reuse both inter-nally and externally.This internal knowledge is generally thebest source of information to answer customerquestions. However,making the knowledgeaccessible can be quite challenging. Testingcontent before publishing for findability is animportant step in the publishing process. Inno-vations in enterprise search applications willallow content authors to:NIdentify which search queries are returningspecific content and customer content usage;NView how content is found within searchqueries (i.e. is it found in the results or af-ter several click-thrus) and receive alertsif specific content starts to score too low;NLeverage a library of consistent,search-vetted terminology when creating andpublishing content (i.e. at Apple,they al-ways use iPod Touch instead of iTouch since this is what customers arelikely to use in their query); andNUse process wizards and automated helpto correctly classify content included inenterprise search results.In addition to internal knowledge andcontent created by employees and subjectmatter experts,the external Web providesother sources of information that can be usedwhen defining customer content needs.External forums and discussion groups provide insight into customer emotions,per-ceptions and sentiments that are not beingshared directly with the company,but shouldbe addressed in some way. Social networksare influencing the way that customers con-nect,tag and share information. Having anunderstanding of the content being usedwithin these networks provides valuableinsight into what specific content customersfind most useful in addressing their specificneeds and what they would recommend toothers with similar needs.The effectiveness of enterprise search islargely driven by the quality and findabilityof the information being pulled from. Byconnecting enterprise search with internalknowledge management,companies areable to deliver the precise,accurate answersthat customers expect and would receive bycontacting customer support without theadditional costs.Enterprise Search A Closed LoopEnterprise search is not something anorganization can set and forget. It evolveswith the changing user needs. Monitoringsearch activities identifies opportunities to improve the quality of the customer experience.NDetecting what content is accessed fre-quently by queries but is rarely accessedby a link suggests that a prominent linkwithin the site navigation should be cre-ated to make it easier to find without hav-ing to resort to search.NIdentifying references to an emergingproduct issue alerts the company to im-mediately respond to the issue by devel-oping new knowledge that can be deliv-ered to customers through their searchqueries. In contrast,queries that containunanticipated product uses and benefitscan be forwarded to marketing for use intheir materials.NMonitoring search terms,keywords andphrases uncovers areas where new intentsshould be created to deliver customersprecise answers to their queries.Enterprise search plays a critical role inthe customer experience and will influencewhether customers walk away with a posi-tive or negative perception of the organiza-tion. Leveraging intelligent,personalizedand intent-driven search,companies are ableto transform frustrating,time-consumingsearches into experiences that provide realanswers and action. Companies that keep apulse on enterprise search and are able tocontinuously evolve to meet the changingneeds and expectations of their customerswill realize a wide range of benefits fromimproved knowledge sharing and customersatisfaction to increased call deflection andreduced support costs. T1 For more information, go to http://www.inquira.com/resources/OnlineExperience.aspKMWorldIntelligent enterprise search Customers expectenterprise search tobe precise, accurateand not require a lot of work. Untitled Documentlegal department when searching for a salespresentation. While this fear seems irrational the relevancy in the enterprise search engineshould ensure that only the appropriate resultsare served there might be some history to thisfear. After years of using search engines that infact have poor relevancy,where the actual salespresentation might be buried on the third pageof results, who can blame the decision to limitthe search to a departmental one?Migrating to Universal SearchRecently, there has been a trend amongleading companies to adopt true search acrossthe entire enterprise, or universal search. Theidea behind universal search is that all contentin the enterprise including that in intranets,file shares, databases, content management systems and business applications can beaccessed through a single search box. Seniorexecutives within these companies understandthat common access to data is the first step tobreaking down silos. Further, they understandthat true enterprise search offers far more thanjust increased productivity for their employees.Specific benefits include:N360 view of the customer. Many com-panies have numerous touch points withthe same customer. For instance, in a con-sumer bank, the teller might deal withroutine transactions, while the loan offi-cer accepts a mortgage application andthe fraud manager deals with a stolencredit card all from the same customer.In such an environment, having powerfulsearch technology can quickly help thebank managers access the customers datafrom multiple systems instantly.N Enhanced customer satisfaction. Con-tact center agents might have search func-tionality across a limited knowledgebase,but could gain immensely from access toengineering and product information.With such access, they can respond tocustomer queries faster and increase firstcall resolution. Small achievements likethis go a long way to increasing customersatisfaction.N Increased pace of innovation. Engineersin fast-moving tech companies constantlystrive to leverage each others   workwithin the company to get products tomarket faster. Similarly, pharmaceuticalscientists strive to save millions of dollarsby cutting down the drug developmenttime-to-market. In either case, search is aproven mechanism whereby companiescan leverage their intellectual capital.N Enhanced decision making. For man-agers and executives across all industries,being able to instantly access all of thebusiness intelligence and other systems inan enterprise means having the rightinformation at the right time to make theright decisions.Further,from a technology standpoint,sen-ior executives are starting to realize that uni-versal search is the missing link that trulygenerates their content management ROI. Con-tent management systems are very good at pro-viding a central repository for content,but afteruploading hundreds of thousands of docu-ments, users simply cannot find the right doc-ument. Most of the built-in search engines inthese ECM systems are limited to their repos-itory, and even then, have poor relevancy.Senior executives have understood this prob-lem and have been looking toward universalsearch as the answer.A Step-by-Step GuideConvinced that universal search is the wayto go? Here is a step-by-step guide that willhelp you make the critical transition fromdepartmental search to universal search.1. Determine user needs.As with any proj-ect, you should start by understanding whatyour users are actually trying to do. Forinstance, it s not sufficient to know that yoursales reps need search capabilities to the salesportal; you want to get an idea what they lookfor. Do they need to access to product docu-mentation? Contractual info? Do they needaccess from their mobile phones or PDAsbecause they are always on the go? While youcertainly don t need to go through formal use-case definitions for all scenarios, it helps toinformally make some calls and get a sense ofwhat your users might need. Here, you alsomight consider a quick user survey; in additionto user needs, you can solicit their input onwhich vendors products they d be interestedin trying out.2. Evaluate vendors.Based on the roughrequirements generated, you can eliminate acertain number of vendors. For the remain-ing vendors, there are five criteria that youshould be specifically looking for:N Usability Does the search platform offerextreme ease of use? For instance,is typingin a query intuitive, or does it require ex-tensive guidelines? Does the platform offeruser-friendly features such as a spellcheck-er or Did you mean ...? Are the results dis-played in an easy-to-comprehend mannerto swiftly scan through them? Ultimately,The Path to Universal SearchHistorically,  most  companies  that  haddeployed enterprise search technologieshad used them largely for departmental uses.For instance, search within a call center envi-ronment, or search for the marketing depart-ment or the engineering department. Whiledepartmental search alleviated some of theend-users frustrations, it never delivered onthe true vision of providing a one-stop,securesearch. Increasingly, leading companies aregravitating toward true search across theenterprise,or universal search. These compa-nies are realizing that with universal search,they can move rapidly and claim a winningposition in this competitive marketplace.Departmental Search: Not a Long-Term AnswerThe reasons for search being limited todepartmental uses are many. First, companiesstill operate largely in a siloed manner. Forinstance, the sales group might want its ownportal or its own repository, so that salespeo-ple can share RFPs, presentations, marketingcollateral and other documents. In most cases,while this information would be useful to therest of the company, the sales repository endsup being a closed system. The result? Accord-ing to research from the Delphi Group, 91%of enterprise end-users search two to threerepositories or more, with a full 29% search-ing more than four repositories and stilldon t find what they re looking for. In the con-sumer world, that might equate to searchingfour different search engines and still beunsatisfied.Reinforcing this point is the fact thatenterprise search had never been at the fore-front of senior IT executives minds. Sowhen a department s end-users were seek-ing a solution to find and share documents,it was much easier for that department tojust get a solution rather than go through thecentral IT department.A second reason for shying away from trueenterprise search might have been fear fearthat by opening up the enterprise search engineto all the repositories in the enterprise, a par-ticular department s vital information wouldget buried among volumes of irrelevant con-tent. Salespeople don t want results from theMay 2008S12KMWorldBy Vijay Koduri, Product Marketing Manager, Google EnterpriseUntitled DocumentMay 2008S13search is a wasted investment unless yourend-users actually use it,so usability be-comes the most important criteria.NRelevancy While usability initiallydraws users to search,relevancy is whatkeeps them using it. Users immediatelyknow if they get their results within thefirst three listings or if they have to go tothe third page of listings.NComprehensiveness Can the search plat-form search all of your content in the en-terprise? It most likely searches files in yourintranets and file shares,but can it searchinformation in content management sys-tems,such as Documentum or FileNet?Can it search structured content in data-bases and business applications? In the caseof certain business applications,conduct-ing real time queries is important; for in-stance,if your CEO is doing a search for sales east coast, she might be looking fora chart showing the latest sales numbers inthe Eastern region. In that instance,a real-time query into your business intelligencesystem is what s needed.NSecurity It is critical to verify that thesearch platform has two levels of security.At a base level,does it work with all of yoursingle sign-on mechanisms to properly au-thenticate a user before showing search re-sults? Additionally,does it have documentlevel security to enable certain documentsbe accessed by only specified people?NEase of administration Finally,to whatextent will you need a team of administra-tors to maintain the system? A search plat-form should work out of the box,requiringminimal ongoing maintenance. If a particu-lar vendor s platform requires multiple peo-ple to maintain it and ensure relevant results,then it will most certainly lose its freshnessover time. Further,if it requires an army ofexternal consultants to integrate it with all ofyour systems,then the costs will multiplyand you may never see a positive ROI.Rather,a platform that s architected to easi-ly connect to any new systems ensures thatit can grow with your organization withoutmuch effort.3. Do a pilot.Based on your evaluationacross these criteria,either through an RFP orany other mechanism,you ll hopefully finalizeon a vendor. At this point,you ll want to do apilot to make sure they can do everythingthey claim. In a pilot,the main thing you re test-ing is how much of the solution can you getright out of the box. Give the vendor anextremely short timeframe say one week.Can the vendor come in,configure their searchtool,and start providing you relevant resultsacross several repositories within a week? If therelevancy out of the box isn t up to snuff,thenchances are that you ll be in for a long road withthe vendor.Once configured,conduct a survey withyour test users. Do they like the interface?Are they able to find documents much fasterwith it? Ultimately,the speed of retrieval andincreased usage will generate your ROI.4. Roll out with core repositories. Startyour production system with the most impor-tant repositories that are meaningful across theenterprise. For instance,you might want yourintranet,all file shares and key content man-agement systems accessed by multiple depart-ments. A typical place to have the universalsearch box is in the home page of your intranet.Your launch will provide a boost to intranet traf-fic and enable you to reposition your intranetas the one stop shop to access allcompanyinformation,not just HR information or com-pany news.5. Scale to all systems.After a success-ful roll-out securing the big win with yourusers across the enterprise,increase the con-nectivity to all systems. Here,it is importantto inventory your systems,prioritize them,and incrementally add them. A helpfulframework is to view your systems at threelevels core,high ROI and niche systems.Your core systems will be the most usedrepositories across your enterprise,such asyour intranet,file shares and certain contentmanagement systems. High ROI systemsmight be specific repositories,such as a con-tact center knowledgebase that would yieldinstant ROI by enabling search. Or it couldbe a business intelligence system,wheresearch capabilities would enable better deci-sions by your managers and executives.Once you have these added,you then willwant to tackle niche systems that might bepertinent only to a subset of users,such asfinancial databases. By that point,all yourusers will be accustomed to accessing every-thing from a simple search box.At this point,you ll truly enjoy the ben-efits of having universal search. TKMWorldGoogle s universal search provides the ability to search allyour enterprise content through a single search box includingintranets, file shares, databases, content management systems and real-time business data. Additionally, throughintegration with Google Desktop and Google.com, your usersgain a one-stop searching experience:Within a few years after Google.com launched a decadeago, it claimed the mindshare of most Internet users by combining three simple elements comprehensiveness, highrelevancy and extreme ease of use. The Google Search Appliance builds on these three principles and incorporatesa fourth security to rapidly gain the mindshare of enterpriseusers. Enterprise users all over the world are able to stay connected within their organizations, make better decisions,innovate faster and provide better service to their customers.From an IT viewpoint, the Google Search Appliance provides unparalleled ease of installation and maintenance.With high relevancy out of the box yet allowing for a fewkey dials to fine-tune relevancy the Google Search Appliance can be operational within days of purchase andprovide high value to the enterprise. And by integrating withall content sources in the company, and scaling up to 30 million documents, your IT department would only maintainone search platform across the entire enterprise.Google s Universal Search for BusinessPowered by the Google Search ApplianceUntitled DocumentMay 2008S14 KMWorldquestion to ask in order to get the answer.True findability requires an interactionbetween you and the available informationcorpus. True findability requires a visual-ization schema that facilitates exploration,discovery,participation and collaboration.True findability requires a flexible meansof pulling out the relevant concepts andentities (content analytics) from your con-tent in a transparent and robust mannerand then exposing that content in intuitiveand highly functional visualizations.Findability typically manifests itself in theform of a search or information access project.However,the information access challenge isnot just about findability; different audiencerequirements must also be dealt with:N For consumers and end users,it s aboutfindability.A highly functional and use-ful source of rich information is wherepeople will consistently return for an-swers to questions or the desire to browsenew subject areas. This translates to pageviews per visit and return rate and can bedirectly measured as part of the valuebrought to your organization.NFor contributors,(enthusiasts and edi-tors) it s about editorial control.Highproductivity power tools for tagging,annotating and playlisting content anddata are necessary to organize and curateinformation. This also facilitates theemergence of participation,e.g.,the en-ablement of the social Web which drivescollaboration efforts and more com-pelling content.NFor publishers,it s about increasing eye-balls thru contextualized content.A sourceof consumer-generated metadata that canincrease the value of core content and dataofferings drives user visits and stickiness.NFor advertisers,it s about precise placementof advertising.Delivering higher yield adsbased on navigation rather than keywords.Today,business success is increasinglydefined by how quickly you can get the rightinformation to your audience,not only chan-neled among your own operations but alsoconnected beyond your site and syndicatedthroughout the Web. Information flows fromeverywhere,all of the time and in increasingamounts; you have to channel the flow or risklosing your audience,customers and/or mar-ket relevance. In order to succeed at this,youneed to better understand the types of audi-ences you serve.Digital Natives versus ImmigrantsStudents in kindergarten through collegetoday represent the first generation of the trulydigital age and therefore have been labeled digital natives. They have relied almost exclu-sively on their personal computer and the Inter-net as their primary information source,instantmessaging and texting for communications,blogs for creative outlet,wikis and social sites(like Myspace and Facebook) for meeting andstaying in touch with friends and people ofcommon interests. These digital natives alsohave used cell phones,digital music players,video games and digital cameras as their pri-mary tools for education,group collaboration,social interaction,entertainment and personalproductivity.Everyone not born into this generationhas been thrust into this brave new world ofdigital communications by virtue of theirdesire or their job,represent the groupknown as digital immigrants. The importance of the distinction is this:Asdigital immigrants learn to adapt to their envi-ronment,they always retain,to some degree,their accent, that is,their former nondigitalways. The digital immigrant accent can beseen in such things as reading a manual firstrather than turning to the Internet or collaboratewith a coworker via IM or a wiki to solve a prob-lem. Additional examples include:printing outNew Equation forFindabilityAre you looking for new ways for yourwebsite to stay competitive,ensure cost-ef-fective growth,launch new business oppor-tunities and grow profitably? Would it surprise you to know that all the informationnecessary to accomplish these things arereadily available today? Unfortunately thisinformation is not only spread across theWorld Wide Web but buried in multiplerepositories within your enterprise underincompatible formats and inconsistentschemas. The answers are out there,but theclassic approach to searching requires youto know precisely what you are looking for,where to look and how to ask for it. Thischallenge is further exacerbated by the needto have IT take man-years worth of devel-opment effort to generate reports,build in-formation hubs and establish data ware-houses or restructure enterprise contentmanagement repositories.The key to traversing this informationquagmire and speed through your informa-tion access development challenges is foundin the new equation for business success:Content Analytics + Visualization = FindabilityIt may be a blatant statement of the obvi-ous,but if you could just find the answersyou would have them... Answers to ques-tions like:What are other people sayingabout my product or service? What are mycompetitors doing? What new governmentor industry regulations are being enactedthat will affect my business? What local,national or global market dynamics arechanging that can have a positive or nega-tive impact on my customers? What infor-mation assets do I have available? Whatcombination of those assets,whether frominside or outside of my corporate firewall,will create a new market breakthrough?What brilliant new idea has that group in thelunch room been toying around with for thelast three months?How do you achieve findability? It iscertainly easier said than done. Chancesare today your challenges are a matter ofknowing where to look,what to ask for,who to ask,when to ask and how to ask.The answers may be out there but some-times it s a matter of knowing the rightMichael Schmitt hasmore than 25 yearsexperience in thesoftware industry,with a proven trackrecord for success,growing andpositioning softwarecompanies toachieve long-termprofitability andmarket leadership.He has heldexecutive management positions at Ariba andJD Edwards and has served on the board of aprivate company.Most recently, Schmitt served as Ariba sexecutive vice president and chief marketingofficer, helping to develop and implementAriba s turnaround strategy and corporaterepositioning to spend management.Simultaneous to his tenure at Ariba, Schmittserved as a board member at Camstar, a leaderin manufacturing execution application software.Prior to Ariba, he enjoyed an eight-year career atJD Edwards (now Oracle), where he held thepositions of senior vice president of worldwidesales and marketing; vice president, generalmanager, central European operations; and vicepresident, general manager, West area.Michael SchmittBy Michael Schmitt,CEO, SidereanUntitled DocumentMay 2008S15KMWorldan email (or even this whitepaper) to read; aphone call to notify someone of an email; anemail trail instead of an IM for casual conver-sation; asking someone to come see a Web pagein your office instead of forwarding a URL;requiring a daily meeting or weekly status reportrather than using a wiki or collaboration tool.The bottom line is that dynamic on-lineinformation is exploding and digital nativeswant to contribute and have a choice in fil-tering and managing it,while digital immi-grints may find traversing this digital riverof information a daunting task. These chal-lenges are not mutually exclusive and willrequire a specific information access strat-egy to be established in order to deliver thebest user experience.Why Findability?Creating a compelling information accessexperience for people visiting your site isimperative. It sets the tone for your online inter-action. A good experience will likely lead toadditional page views and visits. A poor expe-rience will lead to a lost visitor potentiallynever to return. Findability on your site is thatimportant. Failure to find something you knowexists can be personally annoying but can bedisastrous for your website. Finding hiddeninformation and relationships,e.g.,helpingyour users mastering discovery,is essential tothe success of your website.Keyword search can be a starting point foraccessing information on the Web and may suf-fice for simple information retrieval require-ments. However,keyword search requiressignificant added personal effort to achieve rea-sonable results for discovery applications.Search returns huge quantities of false positivesand rarely returns comprehensive results evenwhen the false positives are eliminated.Keyword search alone is inefficient andinsufficient. Ultimately,people want theflexibility to either search or browse. Rela-tional navigation seamlessly combines key-word search and navigation. It allows peopleto see the full scope of information available,narrow (by keyword search or navigation) toa relevant result set,and then find and fol-low relationships to discover additionalinformation they didn t already know.Have you ever felt like the more accessto information you have,the more difficultdecision making has become? Companiesspend billions of dollars every year toimprove the generation,access,managementand archive of structured and unstructuredcontent,all in the name of improved pro-ductivity. But have these improvements trulyimproved findability?With relational navigation,people do notneed to guess how to ask for information theyneed (like they do with keyword search)because relevant content is presented for themto explore. They immediately get a sense of allthe content that is available on a particular topic.Relational navigation is the perfect marriagebetween the bird s eye perspective and bug seye view. Increasing findabilty through con-tent analytics and intuitive visualizations...it sthe winning equation. TSiderean Software, Inc. helps people master discoveryby quickly viewing and exploring the full scope of enter-prise and Web-based information available for betterinformed decision making. Going beyond search,Siderean illuminates previously unseen relationshipsthat help users discover new avenues of exploration and lets you know what you don t know while navigatingfrom a bird s-eye to a bug s-eye view. Founded in2001, Siderean is backed by leading investment firmsClearstone Venture Partners, InnoCal Venture Capitaland Red Rock Ventures.For more information about Siderean or to find out howyour corporation can gain the benefits of relational navigation, please visit www.siderean.com.Spend Mattersis an independently owned website providingnews, information and commentary about spend management the strategies, technologies and tactics companies use to manageoperational expenditures. The site was an early pioneer in usingthe blog format to reach a business audience, and quickly gaineda loyal following among purchasing and procurement departmentsin companies of all sizes. The site is supported by corporate sponsorships and advertising, with more than 100,000 unique visitors a month.From Blog to Information HubAs a blog, Spend Mattersreflected the opinions and reportingof founder and chief blogger Jason Busch. The daily collection ofposts referenced analyst reports, trade journals, conference presentations, mainstream news items, corporate white papersand press releases, as well as other blogs. This breadth of information was part of the site s appeal, with topics ranging fromthe effect of global trade policies on manufacturing sourcing strategies to a detailed review of a major software vendor s latestrelease. By reading a blog post, a visitor to the site might discoversomething new that would be helpful in their job.Like most blogs, Spend Matterscould be searched based onkeywords or topics. Anything more sophisticated was out of thequestion. As readership grew at a double-digit monthly rate, thedemands to provide more content and value for those readers alsogrew. To keep readership growing essential for driving increasedsponsorship and advertising rates the site needed a way to staycurrent with a vast and ever-increasing network of information. Andwith more information would come the need for new and innovative ways to navigate through all that information.The New SiteSpend Matterssoon embraced a bold vision to become a one-stop information hub for all things related to spend management. To achieve this vision, Spend Mattersturned to a solution based on Siderean s Seamark Navigator. The new site:NEnhances traditional blog postings with a sophisticated toolfor flexible navigation and discovery;NAggregates content about spend management from morethan 37 distributed, heterogeneous sources; andNAllows users to make the site their own personal research tool by saving frequently used concepts, sources, and results for repeated reference.Information has always been valuable when someonemakes a purchasing decision, let alone hundreds or thousandsof them on behalf of a company. Realizing this, Spend Matters,with Siderean s help, went from being a well-trafficked blog tobecome something much more valuable for the core audienceof spend management executives and managers. Relationalnavigation saves time, and brings relevant information to areader s fingertips that they might not otherwise discover. That information can affect purchasing decisions, enhance negotiations with suppliers, minimize risk and ultimately helpcompanies save money.Siderean Customer Story: Spend MattersUntitled Documentknowledge with colleagues and businesspartners. These collaboration tools, whichwill turn the quest for collaboration into areality, are now available through new enter-prise search capabilities social search.Defining Social SearchSocial tagging. The simplest and easi-est-to-implement forms of social search arefixed types of social tagging voting andratings. This capability allows users to rateor vote on whether they find a search resultuseful or not. By rating or voting on searchresults, subsequent searchers will see whichresults their peers thought most relevant.This information can also be used to adjustrelevancy. Administrators can run reports todetermine what type of content is found byusers to be most helpful and can create key matches based on this information. This continuous feedback loop ultimatelyimproves the end users ability to findexactly what they need.Another form of social tagging in searchis keyword tagging. This gives users theability to tag documents based on keywordterms that identify the concepts most impor-tant in the document. These keywords thenbecome associated with the document in thesearch engine as metadata and can be foundvia search and used to organized searchresults into categories.The last and most powerful form of tag-ging is search results annotation. Annotationlets users comment on search results byusing free text similar to how one wouldcomment on a blog post. Workers can readother users annotations and quickly learnabout documents pulled up in search resultswithout ever opening them, saving valuabletime in locating information. Additionally,these annotations can even help users learnthe context of information as well as whichcolleagues to turn to for more details.Annotations offer users an alternativeway for colleagues to communicate infor-mation to one another versus email or instantmessaging, providing the added benefit ofnever being misplaced, lost or accidentallydeleted. Annotations also address the con-cern many organizations have of losing valu-able human knowledge when employeesleave or retire. It s an easy way to capture,disperse and use knowledge without fearthat it will walk out the door when anemployee leaves.Social bookmarking. With social book-marking, users can save individual searchresults or queries into virtual folders thathave read/write protection at the user, groupor corporate level. By saving search resultsin shared virtual folders, others in the organ-ization can easily view results in specificsubject areas their colleagues have founduseful and utilize the work others havealready done for their own searches. Thissaves users time as well as allows them totap into the knowledge of others.Social networking. Social networkingcapabilities in search allow users to locateexperts within their organization by viewingprofiles of colleagues pulled from a varietyof different repositories in the form of amash-up. Search-based mash-ups can dis-play employee photos, contact information,biographical data and recent tagging orannotating activity in one single view. Forexample, if an employee has tagged dozensof documents with a specific keyword,whenever that keyword is searched on, thatemployee would show up in the results as apotential expert on that particular subject.Social Search in ActionThe following three scenarios competi-tive intelligence,research and development andhuman resources are all applications wherethe introduction of social search capabilitiescan dramatically increase collaboration,Jump-Starting Collaborationwith Social SearchOver the past several years, industry pun-dits and vendors have predicted that collabo-ration tools such as social tagging, social net-working,wikis and other Web 2.0 phenomenawill become mainstream within the enter-prise. In fact,Gartner reported that by the endof 2007, 30% of all large corporations hadWeb 2.0 applications enabled within their or-ganizations. But as the adoption of Web 2.0functionality hits the enterprise, a questionstill remains how can enterprises effectivelyintegrate these Web-based tools into their cor-porate infrastructure to increase employeecollaboration?The answer is through search. Almost alldata created by enterprise applications canbe accessed through a search box, and manyorganizations connect all of their applica-tions through a single search screen today.Enterprise search has opened the doors toall content stored throughout the enterprise.The next step is to provide end users withtools to make sense of this overwhelmingamount of information and to easily shareMay 2008S16KMWorldBy Jerome Pesenti, Chief Scientist, VivisimoUntitled DocumentMay 2008S17drive innovation,foster communication andimprove productivity.Competitive intelligence.Competitiveintelligence teams within organizations aretasked with keeping up with an endlessflow of information regarding markets,technologies and competitors. This infor-mation comes in many different formsfrom a wide variety of sources and out-lets news stories,press releases,sub-scription-based reports,blog postings,employment advertisements and more. Inaddition,these teams often have a dualcharter to not only make the informationabove accessible to a broader audience,butto also produce their own intelligencebriefs for executive leadership.Social search provides a ready-madeplatform to serve as a collaboration vehi-cle for these market analysts as well as aself-service information portal for the restof the organization. The working home-page of the search interface for competi-tive intelligence workers can include themost recently indexed blog,newswire andreports published on a list of competitorsand hot topics. Each analyst can have a setof virtual folders to drop new searchresults into for current or ongoing proj-ects. Team folders can be set up for multi-analyst collaboration or to disperseinformation to company executives. Gen-eral interest information can be placedinto company-wide folders.Social tagging capabilities give theseteams new,faster ways to communicate withone another on time-sensitive projects. Forexample,when reviewing published reportsregarding potential acquisition targets,ana-lysts can provide snapshot summaries byannotating the search result for each report,making the review process by business devel-opment much quicker. In addition,eachreport can be privately tagged with the proj-ect code name,making it easy to later find alldocuments associated with that project.Research and development.To thrive inan increasingly competitive environment,R&D must rely on collaboration to driveinnovation. Achieving the required level ofcollaboration can be difficult,though,asresearchers are often located across theglobe. The technology required to enabletrue collaboration across all available infor-mation sources has not been available untilthe advent of social search.By annotating results from a searchquery,a researcher in the United States canbegin a virtual conversation with a colleaguein Germany. That two-way conversation canexpand as other workers from around theworld add their commentary. Suddenly awhole new product direction or feature isborn all from a simple search.Social search can also help organizationsleverage their internal social networks by pointing users to experts in their ownorganizations. By tracking the documents aworker tags or adds comments to,the socialsearch platform can identify subject matterauthorities in the field.Take the example of an engineer work-ing for an automaker. The engineer marksseveral search results with a fuel effi-ciency tag for easy identification. Thesearch platform records each tag the engi-neer has made,so when a colleague per-forms a search for fuel efficiency,the firstengineer is identified as a fuel efficiencyexpert via an enterprise mash-up that dis-plays his profile and contact information.The searcher can access other files theengineer has tagged or contact the engineerdirectly. The two can then collaborate eitherin real time or virtually to add value to theirorganization.In both examples,the social search-inspired collaboration and innovation comesnot from management or technology,but byan organization s most valuable resource its workers.Human resources.Search can providereal value in administrative departments,such as human resources,as well.Regardless of an organization s size,oneof the most grueling tasks for any HRdepartment is sifting through resumes to findthe most qualified applicants to fill open positions. Frustration typically existsbetween recruiters sending resumes forreview to business managers,only to hearconstant rejection. Recruiters continue theirsearch sifting through new and old resumes,but struggle to remember why candidateshave been rejected in the past or to find can-didates who meet all requirements of anopen position.An innovative solution to promote col-laboration and foster better communicationthroughout the entire hiring process is toenable users to tag and annotate resumes. Asresumes come into HR,recruiters can rateand tag each resume describing key charac-teristics. Now instead of filing applicantsinto a single category,a resume can havemultiple tags to search against in the future.And as additional recruiters review appli-cants,they can augment the tags and adjustratings as needed.As resumes become ready to share,recruiters can bookmark the resumeswithin the search interface for review andassign them to the appropriate hiring man-ager. Hiring managers can then annotatethese results,posting questions to ask infollow-up calls or explaining why an appli-cant has been rejected. The advantage ofsuch collaboration techniques is that all theannotations and tags can be used in thefuture. The next time a recruiter does asearch,they will be able to see past hiringmanager comments and quickly determineif there is value in sending it out for a dif-ferent position. A rejected candidate forone position might be appropriate foranother with slightly different require-ments. Ultimately,this speeds up the hir-ing process and helps ensure qualifiedapplicants don t get overlooked.The Best of Web 2.0By taking the best ideas from Web 2.0-based concepts,such as social tagging,social bookmarking and networking,andmarrying them with the power of businesssearch,social search gives enterprises theability to tap into and make use of the vastamount of human knowledge within theirown organizations. As the examples aboveshow,social search provides the means togo beyond just finding information to actually freeing it from the confines ofapplications,allowing organizations toincrease collaboration and accelerate inno-vation all while gaining valuable insightinto the collective intelligence of theorganization. TJerome Pesenti is the visionary for the company drivingdevelopment and delivery of Viv simo s products. He alsoplays a crucial role in the company s overall strategicvision and growth. Before Viv simo, Jerome was a visitingscientist at Carnegie Mellon University s computer sciencedepartment, carrying out research on document cluster-ing, data mining and artificial intelligence.Viv simo does search right by combining the simplicityand innovation of consumer search with the flexibility andcontrol of enterprise software. The company works withcustomers to understand their goals and quickly deploysolutions that maximize the business value of informa-tion with an interface users love. Viv simo serves its glob-al client base through headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA, andParis, France, and partners throughout the world. Pleasevisit vivisimo.com to learn more about us.KMWorld Enterprise search has opened the doorsto content. The nextstep is to providetools to make sense of this overwhelmingamount of information. Untitled Documentand applications, and in particular on howcontextual search will need to capture front-end interaction and end-user context in orderfor the search platform to deliver on itspromise of delivering the answer. The Case for Capturing Front-end User ContextHistorically,    as    customers    havedemanded better and better search capabil-ities, vendors have typically responded withmore and more back-end features. Whenusers wanted broader hits on their two-wordqueries, we responded by adding synonyms.When they demanded better accuracy onmisspelled queries, we responded with awide variety of bells and whistles to correctthe query or suggest new ones. When moreand more repositories got added and the datavolumes grew, we responded with facetedsearch and drill-down capabilities for quicknavigation. For each new demand, a newback-end functionality was added to allevi-ate the problem, always moving search tech-nology a little bit forward.Contextual search now accelerates thepace of change. Its ability to capture user con-text has the potential of creating a new quan-tum leap in the industry. This new productdirection is already evident in many oftoday s vendor solutions. Vendors, includingIntelliSearch, have been talking about rele-vance and contextual search for the past yearor so.Take MOSS 2007 as an example. It ratesdocuments closer to where you are standingin the site hierarchy when searching. This isa good attempt at trying to capture the usercontext in order to improve search precision.But what happens when you move outsideof the SharePoint search box? All context islost. The same goes for Outlook. The sys-tem knows you re searching emails and willlimit it to emails, sorted by date, assumingmore recent emails are more relevant. As forGoogle, it does not capture the context ofwhat the individual user is trying to achieveat all, but uses other users experiences andguesses that you are doing the same as them.The first user to search for an imaginary newcar named Black will not find anythinguntil people start talking about it and link-ing to it, even though the site might beindexed. If you knew that the user previouslysearched for this car and also knew that shehad visited the sites of Ford and Chrysler,you could add the context car with theword black and get a much better result.If you also attached the context new to thesearch because the user was chatting with afriend about buying a new car, you wouldget even closer.The Desktop Essential in Capturing ContextOnly the desktop, and not your stand-alone application, will know what you do atany given time, as it is where you do all yourwork. It can capture all your input and mon-itor the chain of events as you work on aproblem. The desktop is simply the bestavailable avenue to capture user context andto improve the user s search experience. Fur-ther back-end improvements are by nomeans unimportant, but without capturingthe front-end interaction, the back-end canonly achieve so much.For instance, by logging user behaviorlinked to time of day, the search platformcan identify your information needs patternand context. How much time do you spendon reading documents from Bill comparedto a document from John? Did you just readfour documents about a new customerbefore you did a search? Are your email con-versations linked more to people in yourdepartment or with customers outside thecompany? Or are you currently working inyour customer service application?One may argue that using all these con-texts is problematic since they potentiallypoint in very diverse directions. However, inreal life most people only work at one prob-lem at a time, so within a defined time-frameThe New Frontier Capturing User ContextCurrently, there  is  a  lot  of  innovationgoing on in search. Not only in technology,but particularly in what customers are doingwith search. Search is no longer just aboutthe familiar search button, but has becomea central platform providing situation-spe-cific information and user interfaces to cus-tomers and employees. This is echoed in themarketplace,  where search vendors nolonger are only speaking of features underthe hood such as relevance, operability andsecurity. The new mantra is delivering theanswer in a time-critical manner within thecontext of the individual. The technologysupporting this claim is the search plat-form s provision of user interfaces withinformation mash-ups from disparate sys-tems tailored to the individual s wants andneeds. Put differently, the search platformhas become a broker between user contextand the available data and applications.The emerging technology opens up a raftof new search adoption opportunities, ofwhich we have just seen the beginning. Cus-tomers with their willingness to experimentwith emerging technology and their in-depthknowledge of their users have an importantrole in uncovering these opportunities. Someadoption trends of the emerging technologyseem to crystallize. These are:N Dynamic consumer portals where searchtechnology is the platform connectingpeople and information and driving userinterface mash-ups;N Corporate intelligence solutions; andN Functional and personalized knowledgemanagement solutions.Common to all these adoption areas isthe search platform s role in providing theusers with precise situation-specific infor-mation and functionality. This role requiresthe search platform to understand the user scontext in order to give precise answers atask that requires contextual search. Con-textual search is an emerging technologythat is still in its infancy and requires fur-ther refinement.In this article we will focus on the searchplatform s role as a match-making brokerbetween user context and the available dataMay 2008S18KMWorldBy Harald Jellum, Trond Lein and Mikael Svenson, IntelliSearch The whole purpose of includingfront-end context is to improve searchprecision. Untitled DocumentMay 2008S19all your context fragments would point inthe same directions. Even if one of themmight be way off,all the others would pullyou back in,still yielding a much betterresult than you would without the contextinformation.Search Platform ImperativesThe whole purpose of including front-end context is to improve search precision.By adding front-end context into the searchprocessing you can dramatically improveresult precision on both a corporate andfunctional-specific level,thus enabling pre-cise and fine-tuned information access sup-porting a multitude of departmental needssuch as customer service and engineeringdepartments.The platform imperatives include addingcontextual metadata into the search queryabout the user s current and past work and cur-rent application usage,in addition to their role,interest and interaction history. Attaching suchfragments to a search query gives the back-end that much more data to work with. Notonly do you have all your old metrics aboutthe indexed content,you can also pull out allthe metrics available on the user context topredict accurately the user s intentions.By putting all this information into a topicmap-like structure,and building a similartopic map on top of your indexed data,youenable the finding of similarities and linksbetween the front-end and back-end topics toboost relevance. You will end up with linksbetween documents,authors,roles,depart-ments,products,dates and times,one-waylinks,two-way links weighted differently eachway,access rights,viewing logs. etc. Thesearch terms will be your primary picker forvalid candidates,and the topic contexts for thedocument and the contexts of the query willgive you the valuable information on how torate this particular information.Next is the presentation of dynamicresults. This is the brokering function of thesearch platform. Search platforms will pro-vide result-list interfaces with dynamicmash-up presentation of data elements andapplication components dependent on theuser context all being configurable by thecustomer in relation to the end user s roleand interest. We can already see the adop-tion of this technology in large consumerportals,and expect this to become prevalentin enterprise search also.With this technology,we expect the emer-gence of innovative and search-driven end-userapplications. One area is the usage of automaticsearches that use only the user context withoutan end-user search-term entry. The applicationIntelliSearch Knowledge Assistant is an exam-ple of this. While writing this article,one of theauthors used this application and switchedbetween Microsoft Word and Outlook,readingemails from a colleague about this article.Doing so,he was alerted by the KnowledgeAssistant of a relevant document on the topicof contextual search,located on our intranet.Customer ImperativesThe opportunities that search 2.0 repre-sents have many implications for customers.For one,they will have to engage with the ven-dor in determining contextual design parame-ters and mash-up techniques when requestingfunctional specific search solutions. Secondly,they will have to standardize on an application-independent search solution in order to capturethe user context across the desktop applications.This entails inducing users away from theapplication-specific search box,toward a cen-tral search solution located either through right-clicking on the mouse,or as a desktop searchquery box in a taskbar. The search box belongsto the user and the desktop,not the indexedrepositories. Finally,customers must be will-ing to experiment with the technology in orderto unlock its full potential. THarald Jellum is the CEO and founder of Intellisearch.Jellum holds a master s degree in computer science andmicroprocessor systems fromthe University of Strathclyde inGlasgow. Jellum has foundedseveral IT technology compa-nies. Jellum has long experiencein product development. He hasbuilt the world s most sensitivemedical flowcytometer, the firstEuropean Internet setup box and an innovative Smart-homesetup-box system. Trond Lein s serves as IntelliSearchvice-president for global market-ing and public relations. Lein holdsan MBA from MIT Sloan School ofManagement and a BSc in electri-cal and electronic engineeringfrom University of Newcastle uponTyne. Lein has held key manage-ment and business developmentroles at leading international ITcompanies.Mikael Svenson serves as thechief technology officer atIntelliSearch. Responsibilitiesinclude the development of thecurrent and next-generationsearch engine both the gener-ic search platform and industry-specific solutions. Svenson hasworked in the IT industry since1996, when he jumped offcomputer science studies at theUniversity in Oslo to pursue a software developmentcareer. His experience includes games developmentand the development of an award-winning newssearch and crawling system. KMWorldThe Knowledge Assistant continuously monitors, finds and alerts information workers of topical and textual documents similar to their current work in Microsoft Word. The Knowledge Assistant is both an ad-hoc enterprise search tool and a monitoring agent. You can use it to search for files or to monitor areas ofinterest from any source, internal or external. The Knowledge Assistant willautomatically search and find data relevant to your current work. E.g. whileyou are writing a document in Word, it will automatically search and find other documents, files, internet articles, etc. containing relevant information according to what you are writing.Your Personal Knowledge Assistant search for relevant information while you workThe Knowledge Assistant comes integrated into the system tray/task bar.The solution supports Microsoft XP and Vista Office versions. The Knowledge Assistant is part of the IntelliSearch Enterprise Search platformthat received the KMWorld Trend-Setting Products 2007 award.Harald JellumTrond LeinMikael SvensonWhat s New? IntelliSearch Knowledge AssistantKnowledge Assistant in VISTA taskbarUntitled DocumentMoving Search and Categorization Further UpstreamWith the rise of e-discovery s profileamongst enterprises due to the aforemen-tioned FRCP buzz, the interest level indeploying sophisticated search for effectivelegal holds has skyrocketed. Search vendorsare responding to this interest with com-pelling new tools,with emerging search-powered technologies revolutionizing legalholds by making them far more automated,accurate,replicable and cost-effective. Andenterprises have not limited the scope of theirsearch deployments to legal holds:thesesame enterprises are increasingly realizingthat the more organized their information isbefore a legal hold is contemplated,the eas-ier the legal hold process will be. Again,search and its powerful sibling automaticcategorization occupy key roles in organ-izing information not just for knowledgemanagement purposes but for compliance,records management and litigation pre-paredness as well.Broadly speaking,when seeking toorganize information for these purposes,knowing where the information resides andhow it is maintained is the first challenge,as awareness of what needs to be organizedclearly presages any organization effort. Asecond challenge relates to the characteris-tics and purposes of such information.What are the relevant subsets of informa-tion? Is the data being kept for businesspurposes...or for compliance or recordsmanagement? The answers to these ques-tions will dictate what information is keptand for what length of time. But the effortis well worth it,as effective informationorganization permits the firm or companyto meet all of its e-discovery documentretention requirements without getting inthe way of secure information access forknowledge management purposes.Other Uses for Search-Powered Legal HoldsIn addition,while e-discovery gets thelion s share of attention in the US,the utilityof solid legal hold technology is not limitedto litigation. One recent example concernsthe European investment bank Soci t G n rale,which incurred trading losses ofsome 5 billion as the result of the activitiesof a single rogue trader,Jerome Kerviel. Thebank is undoubtedly conducting its owninternal investigation into what their traderswere doing prior to the series of events thatled to the losses. Moving forward,it wouldalso be helpful (and may be required by EU or US regulators) for firms like Soci t G n rale to run automated,periodicinquiries or to simply track certain informa-tion using the same technology used in thelegal hold scenario. In this way these bank-ing giants can preserve the necessary infor-mation whether or not there is a regulatoryinquiry,investigation or lawsuit underway oreven on the horizon.Buyer Beware: Search Is NOT Created EqualOne last word of caution is needed withrespect to search and categorization tech-nologies:be aware that not all search is thesame. With search occupying such a criti-cal role in legal holds (and all along theeDiscovery spectrum for that matter),enterprises are gravitating towards searchtechnology which is more sophisticatedyet highly scalable and flexible. For exam-ple,simple keyword or even Booleansearch is no longer sufficient in the legalhold context as legal holds can often pre-serve information months or years beforethe exact scope of an investigation or law-suit takes shape. As a result,it is frequentlyimpossible to define a fully comprehensivelist of keywords which is one reason whyconceptual search technologies areincreasingly popular in this context as theyallow the net to be cast more widely butnot too widely. TSearch s Critical Role inLitigation PreparednessJust when the IT world is already inundatedwith legal terminology due to the December1,2006 revisions to the Federal Rules of CivilProcedure (FRCP),yet another technical le-gal term has begun creeping into the lexiconof the search industry:the legal hold, whichis alternately referred to as a litigation hold. Like its cousin e-discovery, the term legalholdconnotes a certain foreboding in the formof a visit from the legal department which willresult in impossible deadlines with significantdownside for mistakes or tardiness.Simply put,a legal hold is the processwhereby all documentation which may bepotentially relevant to an investigation oranticipated litigation is preserved and col-lected,for analysis or production to a thirdparty (typically an adverse party). While legalholds are mandatory for US entities in litiga-tion,they are also relevant to multinationalcorporations (think Soci t G n rale); fur-thermore,the legal hold requirement is notlimited to litigation as the same obligation isinherent with regulatory investigations,e.g.by the SEC,FTC or DOJ (irrespective ofwhere a company may be headquartered).And the downside of failing to save poten-tially relevant information can be huge,withcourt-levied fines,presumption of guilt withrespect to elements of a case and even out-right adverse judgments representing just afew potential ramifications.With these doomsday scenarios as a com-pelling backdrop,just how exactly does oneconduct a legal hold? Traditionally,legal holdshave been effected one of two ways:eitherphysically sending personnel to copy each indi-vidual laptop,server,desktop,etc.,or trying toreplicate this process remotely (i.e. imagingentire computers over the wire ). Under eitherscenario,large volumes of documents often-times hundreds of gigabytes if not terabytes ofdata must be collected,organized and siftedthrough before they can be made useful. Thus,and as with knowledge management,at its corethe whole technical side of legal holds is fun-damentally a search and categorization chal-lenge. And in this case,the more and deepersophisticated search and categorization tech-nologies are deployed,the simpler and morecost effective legal holds can become.May 2008S20KMWorldCraig Carpenter,general counsel andvice president ofmarketing, overseesall aspects ofmarketing atRecommind. He has extensiveexperience in theenterprise software,information securityand e-discoveryindustries, and is afrequent speaker and panelist. Carpenter is alsoan adjunct faculty member at the University ofSan Francisco where he teaches graduateclasses on high-tech marketing, content management and digital rightsmanagement (DRM).Craig CarpenterBy Craig Carpenter,General Counsel and VP Marketing, Recommind, Inc.Untitled DocumentMay 2008S21uberengine is going to make all of your find-ability issues disappear over night. Instead,follow these steps:1. Define your needs in total so that you canfocus the conversations on how a vendoraddresses them;2. Prioritize the needs to identify the beststarting point;3. Ask all of the right questions,and askthem again and again until you know youhave the answers; and4. Once you have the answers,politely tellyour vendor, Terrific. Now prove it to mebefore I spend a single dime with you. The delightful thing about painful duediligence is you ll find out pretty quicklywhich vendor has substance and which isjust looking for a quick hit. What s more,itsaves you the headache in the long run whenit comes to rollout plans and expectations.Hunt One Shark at a TimeAsk just a handful of analysts how manyorganizations are offering true enterprisewidesearch to each and every member of theirenterprise,and you re guaranteed to hear mostof them say, very few. In fact,some analystsflat out refuse to call it enterprise search,dueto the connotations of the term enterprise. Stephen Arnold of Arnold IT refers to the mar-ket as behind-the-firewall search. In itsannual magic quadrant report,Gartner labelsthe market as information access. The point being that even for somethingas broad sweeping as e-discovery and compliance,search is being deployed tosolve specific findability needs. So why paya vendor hundreds of thousands to millionsof dollars to watch them spend two yearssweeping your search problems under therug? Two years in which NONE of thoseproblems is being solved.This is where we get to the heart of searchbeing an iterative process,iterative both in thesense that you start with one project and expand,as well as begin with standard functionality andget trickier over time. In practice,this boilsdown to starting with your highest-priority needand hunting that shark first. Not only will it getyour full focus,resulting in a faster deploymentand consequent return on investment,but you llalso glean valuable lessons learned that willhelp you in the next phase of the rollout. Con-ducting a pilot with five to 10 users is a goodstart,but it s not enough to tell you everythingyou ll need to know for a deployment that sexponentially larger.Perhaps it s your engineering group,ormaybe it s corporate counsel. Both groupsin most organizations have real and imme-diate needs that can be addressed by afford-able technology that s easy to deploy,manage and use. What s more,they giveyour company an immediate return on yourinvestment,rather than waiting severalmonths or years to get your first dollar backfrom your six- or seven-figure punt.Yes,it is critical that you understand yourvendor s scalability and extensibility. Evenat just tens of thousands of dollars,you wantto get the maximum return on your invest-ment. Talk to your vendor s current cus-tomers,ping the analysts for their views andrequest a pilot to confirm that everythingyou ve learned holds true in your own envi-ronment. Benchmarks are fine,but the vari-ables in search are so great that you ll nevertruly know how a solution will perform untilyou ve tested it yourself. TSearch is an IterativeProcessNavigating the fear,uncertainty and doubtthat stalk the enterprise search waters likelone white sharks boils down to two funda-mental recommendations:1. Quit chumming the waters; and2. Hunt one shark at a time.Search,after all,is an iterative process,in which no wave of a wand can produce themagical solution that fits all needs at alltimes. Anyone selling you something dif-ferent is likely throwing a bridge and somesnake oil into the deal. And if you don tbelieve that,try turning your sentimentanalysis engine loose on the Web to revealall those customers who have been burnedby many a search vendor s magic pill diet. But rather than push the very riddle-basedlexicon we purport to debunk,let s get rightto the meat of it.Quit Chumming the WatersIn 2008,after dozens of years of busi-nesses buying enterprise software and sys-tems,it seems a tad odd to bring up thenotion of proper due diligence. But that sexactly where we find ourselves in enter-prise search,where a high percentage ofimplementations are either delayed,fouledup or left for dead as a result of the customerand vendor not being on the same page fromday one.To be fair,customers are often in a no-winsituation,from the minute they re asked todecipher 50 different vendors with 50 differ-ent messages and terminology. Much of this isbeyond their control. But when we speak ofchumming the waters,we re talking about cus-tomers who go into a review process with onlyhalf the information they need to make the bestdecision,hence giving these sharks (aka ven-dors) fertile ground from which to hunt.Therefore,the only way to truly keep thesepredators at bay is to know your needs insideand out as you go into the review process; thisconstitutes items that are within a customer scontrol. Why cloud your picture with myriad50-cent features if 99% of them have noimpact on your immediate need? It s onething to approach enterprise search from astrategic standpoint to ensure your vendor cangrow with you over time. But it s somethingentirely different to assume that a vendor sKMWorldAs ISYS SearchSoftware s founderand managingdirector, Ian Daviesguides thecompany s overalldirection and servesas its chieftechnology expert.Widely regarded forhis vision anddedication todeveloping high-value software, he has been the lynchpin to thecompany s success since its inception in 1988.Davies designed the original ISYS text retrievalsystem after recognizing a market opportunityfor search engine technology. The technologyhas won numerous awards and has beendeployed by a blue chip list of clients operatingin government, legal, intelligence and more.Ian DaviesBy Ian Davies,Founder and Managing Director, ISYS Search Software To be fair, customers are often in a no-win situation. Untitled Documenttechnology must be robust enough to inter-pret the keywords and present results thatcontain similar terms or concepts. Suchcontextualized results reflect a knowledgemanagement approach to enterprise search.By returning results that have concepts thatare common to the query, your customer schances of a speedy resolution increasesubstantially.That search box must also understandthat many queries are best answered byinvoking a process, not just returning searchresults. For example a customer may initi-ate a request that asks for password reset. Instead of returning a set of results, thesearch box should understand the purposeof that query, and spawn the password resetprocess, or resolution wizard. As with con-textualized search, speed to resolution is thereal key to success.When the query submitted into thesearch box is considered too broad, whichis often the case with single-word queries,the underlying technology can improvespeed to resolution by not only providingthe best possible content, but also by topi-cal categorization of relevant content. Con-tent that is clustered, acting as a filter,reduces the result set and improves thespeed to resolution.Successful Search Depends onRobust ContentEven the most dynamic search technol-ogy is dependent on a robust set of contentsources. Your customers can t find contentthat isn t reachable. Often overlooked whenconsidering search technology,  content ultimately makes the search experiencedynamic and productive for your customers.Simply exposing product manuals, techni-cal notes and formally authored content to a search engine is not sufficient. Dynamiccontent management involves an ongoinganalysis of customer queries to better under-stand where content gaps exist and aligningcontent management processes to help closethose gaps.By enabling a true knowledge manage-ment-driven search process, customer sup-port administrators should be empowered toanalyze search query data and proactivelyfocus on developing new content, or improv-ing existing content, to increase the numberof successful resolutions for customers.The goal for your customers is findingthe right answer. The goal for your organi-zation should be providing that right answerin a fast, accurate and consistent mannerthrough a dynamic knowledge managementprocess. By integrating a robust enterprisesearch with a proactive content creation andmaintenance process,  you ll be able todeliver on the customer s expectation offinding the right answers quickly.KNOVA, a Consona CRM solution, maximizes the valueof every interaction throughout the customer lifecycle.Built on an adaptive search and knowledge managementplatform, KNOVA s suite of applications integrates withCRM implementations to help companies increase rev-enues, reduce service costs and improve customer satis-faction. Industry leaders including AOL, Ford, HP, Novell,McAfee and H&R Block rely on KNOVA s award-winningservice resolution management applications to power anintelligent customer experience on their websites andwithin their contact centers. For more information, visitwww.knova.com.Y our Customers CanSearch, But Do They Find?Oftentimes when customers come to yourwebsite, they are there to find an answer toan issue a resolution to a problem. Manycompanies seem to think that attaching a ro-bust search engine to a content source isenough to do the trick.But companies that consider customerself-service a strategic asset see thatinbound customer exception in a differentlight. They realize that customers don t wantto search for the best result; rather they wantto find a resolution, and find it quickly. Itmay state the obvious, but it is important tonote that, while issue resolution must incor-porate a robust search technology, that tech-nology must also be intelligent enough tointerpret the underlying meaning of the cus-tomer query. Furthermore, a holistic view ofissue resolution also considers the nature ofthe content that customers are presented,and empowers your organization to proac-tively monitor and perfect the resolutionspresented to customers.That simple text entry box, which usu-ally is prominently displayed on every pageof your website, has a daunting task. Whena customer enters a search term, typicallyno more than two to three words, that boxmust launch a query into available contentsources to find the right answer as quicklyand efficiently as possible. On a typicalwebsite, the underlying enterprise searchengine scours your content sources, andpresents the best possible documents thatreflect the queried terms. This is not muchdifferent than popular Web search tools.Customers are left to fend for themselvesand interpret which query result actuallyprovides the best possible resolution to theirrequest. In today s competitive environ-ment, leaving customers to fend for them-selves is not enough.Understanding the Customer s QueryFor leading customer-service organiza-tions, that text entry box needs to be smartenough to interpret the purpose of the cus-tomer query. In some instances,  queryterms are not exact matches to terms withinyour content. In these cases, the underlyingMay 2008S22KMWorldNitin Badjatia hasbeen a technologyconsultant, bankerand businessstrategist for the last18 years. At KNOVA,he s responsible forconstructing tailoredservice resolutionmanagementsolutions for KNOVAcustomers. Badjatiajoined KNOVA in2004 through a merger with ServiceWareTechnologies. Read more from him at his weblog, Thought Stream , www.nitinbadjatia.com.Nitin BadjatiaBy Nitin Badjatia, Enterprise Solutions Architect, KNOVA Customers don t want to search for the bestresult; rather theywant to find a resolution, and find it quickly. Untitled DocumentMay 2008S23search engine, it will be of little value to theworker that relies on it. Search vendors aredeveloping technologies that enable one toconnect to various content sources, struc-tured or unstructured, and relate the datacontained within.Data VisualizationAnother piece to the high-performancepuzzle is data visualization and user inter-face. This is another area of search vendorexpertise. The simplicity of Google s Inter-net search is appealing, but for obvious rea-sons doesn t suit more complex enterpriseenvironments. Pioneers such as Endeca havedemonstrated the importance of not onlyenabling workers to find data, but to presentin a form that enables it to be analyzed andacted on. Document and data assembly is yetanother hurdle that search vendors can helpovercome. Anyone who has built a Power-Point presentation understands how tediousand inefficient document assembly is. Afterfinding and analyzing the relevant content,the user must jump back and forth betweenseveral applications, spending inordinateamounts of time making the data presenta-ble. Search vendors are ideally positioned todramatically improve this workflow. Searchapplications already connect to structuredand unstructured repositories. They canrelate this data automatically and present itin a logical, intuitive interface.Enter the High Performance WorkplaceA new era of productivity will be ush-ered in by search vendors who deliver next-generation software that provides users witha unified and actionable view of informa-tion. The high performance workplace sitsat the intersection of composite applications,data integration and document assembly.Search will be at the heart of it all. TBA-Insight is a next-generation information access com-pany, unifying the ease of search with the analyticalpower of business intelligence. Combining patent-pend-ing intellectual property and a deep focus on user expe-rience, BA-Insight s flagship product, Longitude, helpspeople quickly connect, find and analyze information inways never before possible. Leading global organiza-tions like Booz Allen Hamilton, Bechtel Engineering andLockheed Martin rely on BA-Insight products to deliveractionable insight to every part of their organizations.Whither EnterpriseSearch?Enterprise search is undergoing rapid trans-formation. What was once seen as a simpletext box in which one would enter a set of key-words to produce a list of matching docu-ments, is now quickly being transformed byinnovative technology companies to be muchmore. Gartner has renamed the space infor-mation access to reflect the fact that searchvendors go way beyond indexing and servingup document content. It is the view of this au-thor that search vendors are uniquely posi-tioned to usher in a new era of worker pro-ductivity and a new way to work a highperformance workplace. Search Sits At the IntersectionSue Feldman from IDC conducted astudy called The Hidden Costs of Informa-tion Work This study revealed that knowl-edge workers spent the bulk of their timesearching for, analyzing and assemblinginformation. This process is incredibly inef-ficient. Workers must locate informationin disparate systems, analyze it using vari-ous application interfaces and then compilethe relevant and related pieces. Search ven-dors hold the keys to integrating this work-flow and delivering new high performancetools.Thanks to Google, everyone understandsthat relevance is a key component of goodsearch technology. But most people don tthink of relevance as an integration prob-lem. No matter how powerful the rankingalgorithm, if the data that one works withon a daily basis is not being indexed by theKMWorldMartin Muldoonfounded BA-Insightin 2005 to helppeople overcomethe problem ofinformationoverload. UnderMuldoon sleadership, thecompany hasrapidly become aleading provider ofinformation accesssolutions to the Global 2000. Today, BA-Insightserves more than 350,000 users in organizationssuch as Booz Allen Hamilton, BechtelEngineering, Lockheed Martin and PattersonBelknap, Webb & Tyler.Martin MuldoonBy Martin Muldoon, Co-Founder and President, BA-Insight Everyone understands that relevance is a key component of good search technology.But most people don t think of relevance as an integration problem. Longitude is an information access solution that helps companies and governmental organizations improve operations by making better use of theirdata. Longitude s patent-pending approach to relevance and usability enablespeople to directly access and analyze data from disparate data sources, resulting in immediate productivity improvement. Longitude represents thefirst milestone toward the high performance workplace.BA-Insight s LongitudeUntitled DocumentEnterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0Since the late 90s,the Web has been thesource of the best consumer-oriented exper-iments in community,social networking,user-driven content,expert location,collab-oration,service delivery and merchandising.Today s enterprise professionals expect soft-ware inside the organization to exhibit thesame kinds of clarity,reach,and speed thatthey have become used to on the Web. Thismeans that enterprises need to look carefullyat how to take advantage of the potential of the new lightweight tools to improve performance of professionals and of the firm itself.Two major organizational or culturaltrends are at work to drive or inhibit adop-tion of E2.0:enablement of knowledgeworkers; and ceding control. First,enter-prises will enable their knowledge work-ers to improve their business decisionsthrough accessible analytics,more com-plete information about every aspect of thebusiness and the opportunity to connect tocommunities,experts and other servicesthat can provide them with the answersthey need.Second,leading enterprises will committo learning how to cede some central con-trol and allow for the spontaneous creationof the right assembly of people and infor-mation at the edge of the organization tosolve business problems.Please refer to the diagram for the inter-action we expect to see between these forces.In order to unleash actionable benefits,E2.0 tools need to be dramatically easierto use than current software,and enterpriseinformation needs to become discoverable.Search s role in E2.0 touches both areas.Search tools themselves are perhaps theeasiest of enterprise applications for usersto manipulate the Web has turned us allinto searchers. For better discoverability,search s content processing and refinementfunctions are capable of providing real-time content enhancement throughmetadata markups,analytic overlays andsuggestive UI techniques.Search platform services can providedomain context,can help guide the usertoward the right answer,and can even helplink her up to people who can help with herproblem. In fact,social collaboration anddecreasing workflow friction through betterinformation discovery and expert location iskey to increasing adoption of E2.0 and mov-ing the firm to the right on the diagram.Challenges & OutcomesIf an enterprise tends to hang to the leftand the upper quadrants of the diagram,thenthe familiar inhibiting factors of IT com-plexity and organizational boundary rigiditywill tend to make business adoption of E2.0falter,falling prey to the lack of advancementin the technology or the lack of willingnessof the organization to allow bottoms-up spon-taneous communications to occur. On theother hand,for enterprises that begin to lever-age technology tools such as search and theE2.0 services to move right to the interim step in the diagram,we are already seeingprojects drive measurable business value,convincing senior management to continueto take advantage of E2.0 tools to movetoward the bottom-right to-be position,where considerable business value is createdand user adoption is greatest. Enterprise 2.0is here to stay; the measure of whether it issuccessful depends on how carefully an enter-prise heeds these lessons. TEnterprise 2.0 and SearchSerious Results fromLight ToolingBetter information discovery clarifiesdecisions,enhances social collaboration,reduces workflow friction and makes iteasier to connect to experts. These will bekey contributions of enterprise 2.0.In the last year,a groundswell of supporthas started to form around the potential oflightweight enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) tools andtechnologies to fundamentally alter users information workplaces,collaboration net-works and eventually the IT environmentsand command structures of enterprises. Atthe core of the value proposition for theseemergent practices is the ability of knowl-edge workers to access all the new user-gen-erated and participatory content with search.May 2008S24KMWorldBy Zia Zaman and Hadley Reynolds,Fast Search & TransferIn order to move right across the x-axis, enterprises need only tackle the technology or data challenges that existwithin their enterprises. But to gain agility and collaborative intensity to move to the To-Be state enterprisesneed to cede some central control and allow new work patterns to emerge.Capturing Business Value in 2.0 TrendsUntitled DocumentMay 2008S25interact with the valuable business contentstored in back-end systems. Challenges Facing Information WorkersSo what kind of tasks do real-world usersface in their day-to-day-work? The follow-ing are just a few examples of the questionsfaced by information workers:NWhen I have to change a sales order, howdo I locate the relevant order,and the back-end transaction required to change it?NWhere can I find last quarter s sales figuresfor our best customer? And how can I seeexactly what they purchased from us?N If a client requests additional credit, howcan I get information on his or her currentoutstanding balances?NHow can I find out what kind of complaintswe ve had recently about our top 10 products?N Where can I discover if we rejected ma-terial supplied by one of our vendors dueto poor quality during the last 12 months?N How can I call up the current status of mytravel expenses claims?Search is the SolutionTo provide users with the answers tothese and other questions, enterprises needsearch software that is tightly integratedwith the business applications in which therelevant data is stored.More specifically,  enterprise search solutions have to incorporate profoundexpertise in the following three areas:N User roles. Unlike on the Web, informa-tion workers have specific roles withintheir enterprise and its business software.An effective search solution has to be ableto leverage these roles and the relevantbusiness context so that employees can runqueries tailored to their very specific needs. N Interrelationships between business ob-jects. A search solution has to take intoaccount how the business objects withinenterprise applications are related to eachother. It should know, for example, thatsales orders are associated with cus-tomers, and purchase orders with ven-dors. What s more, the software shouldleverage these relationships to intelli-gently propose related actions alongsidethe user s hit list. So if a user queries acustomer name, the solution should pro-vide additional links to the back-end sys-tem enabling the employee to completeassociated tasks, such as creating, chang-ing or deleting sales orders. N Security. Because a great deal of infor-mation within enterprises is of a confi-dential nature, the software has to ensuresearches are secure, and that staff only seewhat they are authorized to see. This isonly possible if the solution developershave a firm grasp of the underlying business applications security model. Only enterprise application vendors havethe knowledge and skills needed to fulfillthese requirements. They are thereforeuniquely positioned to support searches forstructured data residing in their applica-tions after all, who knows business appli-cations better than the companies thatdevelop them?For these reasons, search solutions deliv-ered by enterprise software vendors likeSAP can give enterprises the expert supportneeded to make the most of valuable datastored in their business software. TMatthias Weber brings eight years of experience in tech-nology marketing to his role as marketing director at SAPAG. He drives marketing communications and programsfor SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search.Founded in 1972 as Systems Applications and Products inData Processing, SAP is a leading provider of business soft-ware. SAP delivers products and services that help acceler-ate business innovation for its customers. Today, morethan 46,100 customers in more than 120 countries run SAPapplications, from distinct solutions addressing the needsof small businesses and midsize companies to suite offer-ings for global organizations. SAP currently employs morethan 43,800 people in more than 50 countries worldwide.SAP is listed on several exchanges, including the FrankfurtStock Exchange and NYSE under the symbol SAP. To findout more, visit www.sap.com. Mastering a Key Challenge of Enterprise SearchPut Structured Data atEmployees FingertipsAs the pace of business accelerates, rapidaccess to the right facts and figures is be-coming more important than ever. Today sinformation workers expect their enterprisesearch solutions not only to be powerful, butalso to provide the same ease of use as fa-miliar Internet search engines. And when itcomes to tracking down unstructured data,there are plenty tools out there that fit the bill.However, a wealth of information alsoresides in business applications such asenterprise resource planning, customer rela-tionship management, business intelligenceand supply chain management software. Butall too often, these potentially valuableresources remain untapped. The problem:many occasional users lack the specializedskills needed to locate and act on data inback-end systems. The result: employeefrustration, lower productivity and sluggishdecision making.To master these challenges, businessesneed a powerful tool that gives all usersstraightforward, secure access to structureddata residing in enterprise applications enabling them to quickly find precisely thedetails they need for the task at hand. A truly effective enterprise search solu-tion not only has to allow employees toquickly and easily pinpoint the right data; itshould also open up new ways for people toKMWorldBy Matthias Weber, Solution Marketing Director, SAP AGSAP is the world s largest business software company. Delivering on its commitment to empowering information workers, SAP has created SAP NetWeaverEnterprise Search. This cutting-edge solution provides information workers withstraightforward access to data they need for their day-to-day tasks particularly ifthis resides in SAP business applications. By leveraging the security mechanismsof SAP enterprise applications, the software ensures sensitive corporate data canonly be viewed by authorized users. SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search givesemployees powerful functionality at the click of a button improving decision making, while saving time and money.SAP NetWeaver Enterprise SearchUntitled DocumentMay 2008S26 KMWorldcompanies have realized their external-facinginformation is as important as what is locatedon the inside,these solutions have developedconsiderably,building on technologies origi-nally used within organizations and aug-mented by their own unique approaches.Serving Your PublicA company s public-facing website is oftenits first point of connection with the outsideworld and,as such,is an important method forbuilding brand,communicating with customersand partners and in many cases increasingsales particularly if visitors find the informa-tion they re looking for quickly.Because people have become accus-tomed to efficient search tools on the Weblike Google or Yahoo! or within an organi-zation,they have developed a low tolerancefor search methods that produce poorresults. Therefore,it is critical to serve web-site visitors with search functionality thatallows them to find what they need quicklyand efficiently.A recent survey SLI Systems conducted(November,2007) supports this notion byhighlighting the fact that the majority ofpeople who cannot find what they re look-ing for on a website within the first minuteor two of landing on the site,will leave andoften not return.All Searches are Not Created EqualBecause searches conducted on internaldata stores differ significantly from thoseconducted on a website,search productsmust be designed specifically for each func-tion to be effective. The content an internalsearch product is responsible for navigating,for example,typically contains multipletypes of documents and unstructured data-base files,while information contained on awebsite is often product-oriented or containscorporate materials. The way this informa-tion is indexed and displayed to users varieswith both approaches,as do metrics. Forexample,a typical product search on a web-site may contain an image of the product,descriptive information,pricing and avail-ability details and may integrate into anecommerce platform.Luckily, search technologies haveadvanced considerably in the past few years.Today,search technologies are much morein tune with the type of information beingsearched. In the case of site search,whensomeone submits a query on a public-facingwebsite,the information should be readilyavailable for the searcher to review,filter andselect the item that he is looking for.Likewise,a site search solution should offerother important features,such as search engineoptimization (SEO) capabilities to drive greatertraffic to a website from major search engines.Site search solutions can also take advantageof hosting models like SaaS to provide the flex-ibility and business efficiencies not availablewith installed software. TThe Forgotten Search SolutionWhen you buy a new home,one of thefirst things you set out to do is decorate itand make it your own. You may hang newwindow treatments,add different paint col-ors to the walls or even do some remodel-ing projects like finishing a basement. But,what about the outside of the home? Youwouldn t buy a house and spend money onfixing-up the inside without also paying at-tention to the exterior. While you want theinside to be comfortable and inviting,en-hancing the appearance on the outside is justas important for increasing curb appeal andmaking guests feel welcome.Similarly,when a company decides to over-haul its enterprise search system,it s commonfor them to only look at technologies designedfor searching inside their business (i.e. helpingstaff find information stored in various com-pany repositories) and assume that the outside(i.e. searching on the company s website) canbe performed by the same solution.Solutions for searching public-facinginformation on a website are the often-forgot-ten step children of enterprise search. But,asAs a co-founder ofSLI Systems, Dr.Shaun Ryan wasone of thedevelopers of thecompany s unique Learning Search site searchtechnology. He wasalso an originalfounder ofGlobalBrain, whichwas bought bySnap/NBCi.com in 2000. Ryan and his partnerslater bought back the company and renamed itSLI Systems. Prior to GlobalBrain, Ryanconsulted with companies includinginternational health technology companyInvacare. He is a frequent speaker at the SearchEngine Strategies conferences globally and postsinsights on site search trends to SLI s blog.Dr. Shaun RyanBy Shaun Ryan,CEO, SLI SystemsSLI Systems hosted site search and SEO solutions are built on patented advanced search technology, which continually learns from past site search activity. By tracking visitors aggregate searchqueries and click-thrus, SLI delivers results based on popularity. Whether companies use their websiteto sell products or provide support or information, SLI will return the most relevant search results.Hundreds of companies have recognized the importance of powering their websites withSLI s site search solutions to meet their customers needs, build brand, increase customer loyalty and drive revenue.One such company, The New England Journal of Medicine(NEJM), uses SLI Systems on-demand search services so its readers can quickly identify important new medical researchand advances in treatments.As the most widely read, cited and influential general medical journal in the world, NEJM has longrecognized the important role online distribution and interactions have for physicians and healthcareprofessionals. The company turned to SLI Systems to help its online medical community more immediately identify important new research and clinical information.Because SLI s Learning Search delivers results based on relevance and popularity, NEJM readers can easily find articles their colleagues are reading and what the community considers to be important information about advances in research and therapeutic options. Given the increasing amount of biomedical research available and new findings cited every day, SLI is helping NEJM meet the challenge of helping medical professionals sift through significant medicaldevelopments to find the latest trends and treatment advances.SLI works closely with its customers to ensure their external facing websites provide visitors with themost relevant and timely content possible. Organizations that understand enterprise search entails more than just searching what is on the inside of the company are reaping the benefits of providing anexceptional search experience to all of their audiences, no matter where they are seeking information.Site Search in PracticeUntitled DocumentMay 2008S27document,email or website directly from theresults page and within the confines of thenative application. Having to toggle betweenapplications will result in failure.3. Limited functionality. Yes,theessence of the Web search experience is sim-plicity but in an enterprise context,this hasto be balanced by the need to filter results eas-ily and flexibly. One-size-fits-all results do anequally poor job for everyone. On the frontend,users should be able to tweak searcheseasily by metadata,document type,source,date range and other factors. On the back end,administrators should be able to spotlight spe-cific high-value documents for certain key-words and types of searches.4. No transparency. It s not a profes-sional s job to worry about technical detailslike which systems they re searching or howthe underlying security works. Instead,a sin-gle screen should allow searches across anyand all enterprise stores,and return resultsfrom every resource consolidated on a sin-gle page,while respecting native securityand giving the user the ability to sort and sifteasily through the returned results.5. Unclear objectives. While the preced-ing four pitfalls are inherent in the solution,this one is entirely on you. Have you fullydefined your needs prior to implementation?Have you sorted out what s really importantto users when it comes to finding the infor-mation they need to do their jobs? Make sureto consider your needs both now and in thefuture so you re not left high and dry whenit s time to move on to phase two; don t set-tle for good enough for now. None of this is meant to diminish thevalue of technologies and features like clus-tering,taxonomies,social search and fed-eration; they all have an important role toplay. But they can only deliver value if thesystem is being used,and only a solutionthat gives users the kind of experience theyreally want can pave the way for a success-ful KM initiative.In my own vendor search,I found thatthe most successful solution for avoidingthese pitfalls comes from Interwoven,acompany with a long history of providinginnovative and effective KM solutions forlaw firms. I chose Interwoven UniversalSearch:Professional Services Edition formy organization; if you re considering anenterprise search implementation for yourfirm,I recommend giving it strong consid-eration as well. You might just save a mil-lion dollars. TInterwoven is a global leader in content managementsolutions. Interwoven s software and services enableorganizations to maximize online business performanceand organize, find and govern business content.Interwoven solutions unlock the value of content bydelivering the right content to the right person in theright context at the right time.Five Ways to Waste aMillion DollarsAfter years of false starts and uncertain strate-gies for knowledge management,organiza-tions now understand that effective KM has tobe built on a strong foundation of enterprisesearch. Vendors are heeding the call with a newclass of solutions that promise the ultimate insearch performance,backing their claims withpage after page of impressive features and tech-nical specifications. Listening to their pitches,you might think that realizing the full value ofyour enterprise knowledge is only a purchaseorder away but if you re not careful,youmight discover soon enough that all you vebought is another hollow promise.For all the innovation it may offer,an enter-prise search solution is just like every other newapplication that gets introduced in one crucialrespect:it will only work if people use it. Whatis critical to a user with a search tool is:can Iget the results I need,when I need them,theway I need them? A single bad experience canturn any user against an application and intoday s Web-indexed world,you have to meeta high standard to win full adoption for a newsearch product.Don t let the wrong search implementa-tion doom your KM initiative. As you eval-uate your options for enterprise search,keepa close eye out for these five key pitfalls:1. Slow performance. This should gowithout saying,but it s all too easy to beswayed by other features and lose sight ofthe ticking clock. Nothing wastes time andfrustrates users more than staring at a spin-ning beach ball. At minimum,the solutionshould deliver results for the typical searchin no more than three seconds.2. Inconvenience. In this era of integratedsystems and all-purpose interfaces,a resultspage should provide direct access to the hitsit returns. Users should be able to open anyKMWorldRob Guilbert is theknowledgemanagementarchitect at a top-five Am Law firm inNew York City. Hehas more than 14years of experienceworking in the legalindustry, specializingin documentmanagementtechnologies, CRMsystems, search technologies and relationshipmapping. Guilbert is currently the co-chair of theNew York Interwoven User Group and isscheduled to be a speaker/panelist at events thisyear such as Interwoven s Gear Up Conferenceand the ILTA Conference.Robert D. GuilbertBy Robert D. Guilbert,Knowledge Management Architect An enterprise search solution is just like every other new application in one crucialrespect: it will only work if people use it. A single screen should allow searches across any and all enterprise stores, and returnresults from every resource. Untitled Documentwww.infotoday.comProduced by:KMWorld MagazineSpecialty Publishing GroupFor information on participating in the next white paper in the Best Practices series,contact:paul_rosenlund@kmworld.com or kathy_rogals@kmworld.com " 561-483-5190Kathryn RogalsPaul RosenlundAndy Moore561-483-5190561-483-5190207-236-0331kathy_rogals@kmworld.com   paul_rosenlund@kmworld.com  andy_moore@verizon.netFor more information on the companies who contributed to this white paper,visit their websites or contact them directly:www.kmworld.comFast Search & Transfer, Inc.117 Kendrick Street, Suite 100Needham MA 02494PH: 888.871.3839FAX: 781.304.2410Contact: info@fastsearch.comWeb: www.fastsearch.comGoogle Enterprise1600 Amphitheatre ParkwayMountain View CA 94043PH: 650.253.4370Contact: appliance1@google.comWeb: www.google.com/enterpriseInQuira Inc.851 Traeger Avenue, Suite 125San Bruno CA 94066PH: 650.246.5000FAX: 650.246.5036Contact: www.inquira.com/contact.aspWeb: www.inquira.comEMC Corporation176 South StreetHopkinton MA 01748PH: 800.222.3622 or 508.435.1000FAX: 508.497.6904Contact: softwaresales@emc.comWeb: www.emc.comCoveo Solutions Inc.Riverside Center275 Grove Street, Suite 2-400Newton MA 02466PH: 800.635.5476Contact: info@coveo.comWeb: www.coveo.comBA-Insight445 Hamilton Avenue, Suite 1102White Plains NY 10601PH: 914.220.8395FAX: 914.428.4001Contact: sales@ba-insight.netWeb: www.ba-insight.netKNOVA Softwarea division of Consona CRM450 East 96th Street, Suite 300Indianapolis IN 46250PH: 800.572.5748 or 412.316.8550Contact: info@knova.comWeb: www.KNOVA.comRecommind, Inc.170 Columbus Avenue, Suite 310San Francisco CA 94133PH: 415.394.7899FAX: 415.397.3811Contact: info@recommind.comWeb: www.recommind.comSAP America Inc. 3410 Hillview Avenue.Palo Alto CA 94304PH: 800.872.1727Contact: www.sap.com/usa/contactsapWeb: www.sap.com/enterprisesearchISYS Search Software, Inc.8765 E. Orchard Road, #702Englewood CO 80111PH: 800.992.4797FAX: 303.689.9997Contact: info@isys-search.comWeb: www.isys-search.comInterwoven, Inc.160 East Tasman DriveSan Jose CA 95134PH: 866.341.3786FAX: 408.433.9342Contact: info@interwoven.comWeb: www.interwoven.comIntelliSearch Inc268 Bush Street, #3641San Francisco CA 94104PH: 510.339.5610FAX: 510 649 5304Contact: info@intellisearch.comWeb: www.intellisearch.comSiderean Software, Inc.390 N. Sepulveda Boulevard, Suite 2070El Segundo CA 90245PH: 310.647.4266FAX: 310.647.3470Contact: info@siderean.comWeb: www.siderean.comSLI Systems20370 Town Center Lane, Suite 208Cupertino CA 95014PH: 866.240.2812Contact: sales@sli-systems.comWeb: www.sli-systems.comVivisimo, Inc.1710 Murray Avenue, Suite 300Pittsburgh PA 15217PH: 866.296.8484 or 412.422.2499FAX: 412.422.2495Contact: vivisimo.com/html/contact-aboutWeb: www.vivisimo.comZyLAB North America LLC7918 Jones Branch Drive, Suite 530McLean VA 22102PH: 866.995.2262FAX: 703.991.2508Contact: info@zylab.comWeb: www.zylab.com