The primary objective behind my book Enterprise Search was to provide a largely non-technical introduction to enterprise and website search and sales of the book have been very encouraging. However a number of people have suggested that it would be useful to have a short document that makes the key points about the need for search investment in addition to a 160 page book.
The September report to members of The Search Circle is entitled Enterprise Search and Business Performance – A Briefing Note for Senior Managers. The topics covered in this 10 page paper include
- Making informed decisions
- Searching questions
- Information, search and organisational performance
- Solving the information access challenge
- Investing in people, not just in technology
- Content quality and search quality
The final section is a set of 10 actions that senior managers should take to reassure themselves that their enterprise and website search applications are providing business value. My expectation is that undertaking the comparatively simple checks will reveal a lot of problems! It was an enjoyable challenge writing the report as I tried to present the search business case in a way that would engage senior managers and hopefully create some top-down support for search managers as they make a business case for additional investment in resources to support existing applications.
The report is only available to members of The Search Circle. In mid-October I will be releasing my SearchCheck search benchmarking methodology to members as well as a report on SharePoint 2010 and 2013 Search co-authored with Agnes Molnar.
Martin White