Tag: cost of search

Living with Bad Enterprise Search: The Costs of Not Finding What Your Business Needs

Search technology is critical to the mission of any business. It facilitates cash flow, revenue, Business Intelligence (BI), productivity and employee satisfaction.

Do you remember TV Guide? There was a time when TV Guide sat on nearly every coffee table in every living room in America. If you didn’t have a subscription, you would grab it in the checkout line at the grocery store every week. If you wanted to plan out your evening in front of the tube, you would pick it up, thumb through it, read the synopsis of the show, and make an informed decision about watching Dallas or Falcon Crest that evening.


Then everything changed. Not overnight, but let’s fast forward to today. If you are 20, you don’t know what TV Guide is. Most cable packages have a guide built in so you can plan your viewing, record shows you will miss, or call up ones you want to watch, even from last season. Schedules for networks are posted online. And it’s a good thing, because back when TV Guide sat on our coffee tables, there were three networks. How many are there now? Imagine how thick that TV Guide would be.


The explosion of content is not exclusive to television. Businesses have had an estimated 60% growth in digital content per year, and it shows no signs of stopping. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses haven’t upgraded their cable box, so to speak. They are looking for crucial documents and data on a manual dial. The truth is, companies have been living with bad search for a long time. And they’ve been paying for it.


The IDC estimates that 2.5 hours a day per employee are wasted looking for information they need to perform their job, or recreating that information altogether. Additionally, making sound decisions depends strongly on having valid information to make those decisions. Without access to information, bad business decisions are made, and bad business decisions are deadly to the enterprise. Business intelligence efforts can fall short without the right search platform powering fast relevant results. Worst of all, if your customers cannot find the product or service they need on your system, they will go somewhere else for it.


Content Management Systems are gaining in popularity, but what’s powering the search? How well does it deal with unstructured content? Does it give results with the relevance you need to make the best decision? Can your employees find what to need to execute their tasks? Can customers find your products?


Search technology is critical to the mission of any business. It facilitates cash flow, revenue, Business Intelligence (BI), productivity and employee satisfaction. It has an immediate impact of the bottom line of the business. It is an essential ingredient to the successful enterprise on so many levels, to run a business with inadequate search technology is like using an old copy of TV Guide to try and find and decide what to watch.

If you are assessing your search platform and it’s bottom line impact on your business, contact us.  We can analyze your systems and provide a free consultation on the best enterprise search solution for your company.

Open Source Search: Isn’t It Expensive?

You’ve heard the debate on open source search vs. proprietary search. One question that constantly comes up for prospective clients is “What’s all this going to cost me?”

In these times, it’s a good question. Because proprietary has neatly packaged, practically shrink wrapped plans, it’s much easier to discern how much you will spend on a solution. But how much will it cost? That’s an entirely different question.

I see you cocking your head sideways.

Proprietary search has hidden costs. What if the software doesn’t perform the way you need it to? Does the software understand the nuances of your business? How adaptable is it? How much will it cost to adapt that software to get it to perform the way my business needs it to? Questions like this need to be asked, and answered. Eventually you will ask yourself….why am I paying for all of this? And your developer will ask, “why can’t I access the source code?”

What I’m getting at is this: It is a reassuring feeling for a customer to see what a package costs, to understand what services you will get with a solution, and to anticipate what the licensing fee will cost on an annual basis. If it’s your job to research a solution and present findings to your executive team to make a decision, then proprietary search, on the surface, seems a more secure choice. But rarely, if ever, are these solutions a perfect fit for the customer. It’s like buying a Ferrari, with all the brand recognition and polish a Ferrari offers, and not ever driving it past second gear, or cutting the wheel more than 15 degrees, or getting a chance to have your trusted mechanic look under the hood. This is why open source is such a good solution for businesses who want their IT to move quickly.

We’re hearing more buzz about companies waking up to the agility of an open source solution. Most recently, with the acquisition of Autonomy by HP, the industry is telling stories of ex Autonomy customers migrating to Solr (open source search) with only the annual licencing budget to finance the migration. Without an annual expenditure of cash for licensing, and the freedom of not being under a licensing agreement, companies quickly recoup the initial expenditure of a migration.

What kind of car does your company drive?

If you are examining the different choices for implementing search technology in your organization, contact us.  We’re happy to talk to you about the best solution for your business.