Did you know that some employees spend up to two hours per day searching for information in intranets and enterprise search tools? Or that as many as on in three of these searches are unsuccessful? As a result 40 % use the wrong information and 63 % make critical deceptions without being informed.

These numbers are from the report The Digital Workplace by Stephan Schillerwein from Infocentric Research, a consulting, software and research company from Switzerland. The report was presented by Schillerwein at the Online Information Conference in London earlier this month.

Reasons for search problems in the enterprise

In addition to the disturbing numbers above, the report concludes they there is a productivity loss in information work of a whooping 25 %. So search in the workplace seems to be broken and it causes serious problems.

What are the reasons for these problems? One obvious cause, reported by Martin White of Intranet Focus at the same conference, is that most businesses have no enterprise search system at all. Really.

One reason stated by informants among decision makers in these enterprises is that “people mostly remember where they put their files”. These same people do not think that it is important for colleagues to have access to each other’s information. So in many cases, search simply is not a priority.

Different from Web search

Another reason is that enterprise search needs to meet different challenges than web search. Searching local databases and repositories is not like searching the Web. Most of the files have little context for the search engine to analyze. So while Google (GOOG) can glean information about the relevance of a web page from the links to it and the anchor text of those links among other factors, an enterprise search tool needs to use on page data and meta data.

Some of these, like file type, file size and date, are generated automatically, while other important meta tags referring to the content of the file have to be added manually. The importance and complexity of this task is all to often underestimated.

Unrealistic expectations

A third reason is that the user’s expectations of enterprise search are often unrealistic. The data searched are different, more diverse than in the Web search most of us are used to. This means that using the enterprise search tool is not as easy as Google — it might require training.

Often, the search results will be more complex than in Web search and finding what you are after might require you to refine your search by adding filters or other criteria to your search.

The problem of context

According to Schillerwein, one of the main reasons for the problems of enterprise search is the lack of context. In days of old, information in the enterprise was found by secretaries — real persons, not computerized assistants — who knew who you were, what your job was and what you were currently working. A search engine has none of this context.

Information systems in the workplace are usually not embedded in the processes, roles, tasks or activities of the persons operating them.

Solutions

To overcome these problems, we cannot stop at combining existing tools under the umbrella of a portal. Instead, Schillerwein suggests a solution based on several elements, such as consistent coverage of information flows for processes, bringing together the worlds of structured and unstructured information, and adding context.

Schillerwein’s solution relies in part on adding context by analyzing these sources and more:

• Roles, position and (current) location of an employee
• Projects an employee is involved in
• Cases an employee is working on
• Meetings an employee has in his schedule
• Tasks an employee is working on
• Communities an employee is member of
• Experiences, competencies, skills
• Content authored
• Documents used, websites visited, information subscribed to, functions often made use of, …
• Defined preferences
• Current location in the Digital Workplace

Based on indications like these, a search system will not only be able to provide the right information when searched for, but might even volunteer information unasked. This means that in some years, you could have an enterprise search system that contributes to solving your everyday information needs and you don’t have to write a query or analyze the search results.

Read more

The report The Digital Workplace By Stephan Schillerwein is free.

Pandia recently published a book on Enterprise search by the renowned industry expert Stephen E. Arnold of Arnold IT: The Landscape of Enterprise Search. Get the book! It’s a mere 20 USD.

For more on the challenges of enterprise search, see my paper for the 2011 Online Information Conference: The World of Enterprise Search.

photo credit: Elsie esq.