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Trade Association Defines Search Its Way

I don’t know much about the Technology Services Industry Association. Most associations serve the narrow requirements of a select membership. Some “associations” are not really associations. I learned that the outfit called the “National Association of Photoshop Professionals” is a company that owns an association, a magazine to which I subscribed once, and a string of expensive “how to” conferences. TSIA may be like the American Bar Association or it could be like the NAPP outfit.

What caught my attention was a news story that we snagged in the Overflight system. The headline was “TSIA’s “Intelligent Search Market Overview” Report Identifies Innovative Criteria for Search Technology Selection.”

Reports about members are bread-and-butter activities in some “associations.” I don’t have a problem with a member profile write up but I did stumble on this passage in the news story:

The following search specialists participated in the study: Attensity, Baynote, Clarabridge, Consona CRM, Coveo, InQuira, KANA, nGenera CIM, Q-go, and RightNow.

So what’s the big deal? Well, for the addled goose, this listing of companies as “search specialists” is one of the most egregious examples of confusing an enterprise procurement team I have encountered. Tossing in the word “intelligent” just plain flummoxed me.

Let’s look at this line up of “search specialists”.

First, there’s Attensity. This is a deep extraction content processing firm. Recently the company has moved from the intelligence market sector into advertising, sentiment analysis, and other markets. The company’s technology processes content and generates a range of outputs that can used to figure out whether email is positive or negative. The firm provides basic search functionality, but the company is a vendor that adds metadata to content objects. Those metadata can be manipulated in a number of ways. One of the uses is to locate documents tagged in a consistent manner by the Attensity system. This is impressive technology, but it is a component of search, not a search system along the lines of the Autonomy, Exalead, or Google offerings. This is an error of confusing the parts with the whole, and it is a serious logical flaw in the TSIA write up.

Second, there is Baynote. This is a company that offers a “recommendation engine.” Think of Baynote as a more robust, more configurable version of the Amazon system. The idea is that the firm’s technology can process information about a Web site visitor and then generate outputs that reveal intent and context. Again, this is powerful technology, but it is not search. Baynote supplements more comprehensive search-and-retrieval systems. Baynote is what it says it is, a recommendation engine. Why label it a search system? (I think it is to create a report for which inclusion was advertising and revenue perhaps?)

Third, Clarabridge is a company that, at one time, had some of the good old MicroStrategy DNA. The system can process the type of data collected in a traditional structured business intelligence system and perform additional functions. Instead of coding a report, a client can use the Clarabridge system to frame a Google-style query and get a report out. Recently Clarabridge has embraced the Attensity approach of pushing into customer support and other allied market sectors. There’s good business logic behind this shift, but Clarabridge is not a vendor of search-and-retrieval technology. In fact, one might need both Clarabridge and a more robust text processing system to get most users comfortable with the outputs in a business application. This is a repositioning of Clarabridge from business intelligence to a specific vertical application. Okay with me but misleading in my opini0on.

Consona CRM is just what the name says. Customer relationship management. The company includes a basic search system with its software, but the core competency of the company is in supporting a call center application. Try to extend the system over the full spectrum of potentially relevant content in an organization, and you will find the need to look for other bits and pieces. This is a naming error because CRM is not search. Search is a utility within CRM in my opinion.

Coveo is a vendor of search and content processing. Unlike the other firms, Coveo started with a search system and has now created a solution that fits into a customer support application. Coveo’s platform makes possible more than customer support. While it is important to explain how Coveo’s customer support solution delivers call center features, it is a disservice to Coveo to position the company narrowly.

InQuira is a company formed by fusing two other firms. The company has natural language processing technology which is sold as an engine for self-help systems. The firm can deliver a broader search solution, but I think of the company as a niche player in the customer support sector. I don’t think of InQuira in the same way I perceive the Microsoft Fast type of solution. In my experience, there are some interesting parallels in the trajectories of the two firms that merged to create InQuira and the fusion of Microsoft and Fast Search & Transfer. InQuira, therefore, is a search system but it is one that has been shaped to somewhat special purposes.

KANA is a help desk vendor. In a meeting with the firm years ago, I was told that KANA had state of the art search technology. The demo showed that a customer support rep could enter a product name and see information about that product from different repositories. This is indeed search. In my opinion, it was primitive but it worked. Since that demo, I have not considered KANA a search vendor. In fact, I have resisted KANA as a vendor of knowledge management solutions. The firm builds and maintains customer support system for a large number of companies. Some of these companies have multiple search and retrieval systems plus KANA.

nGenera says that it is a vendor with systems that power “the collaborative enterprise.” One function of some nGenera applications is search. Search is like the hubcap on a Hummer, and I am not sure that nGenera itself would describe the company a search vendor. The company says, “Our solutions combine strategic insight, onsite services and the most comprehensive suite of collaborative applications on the market.” I have no problem with nGenera, but I think that describing this firm’s products and services as “search” is just misleading.

Q-Go says that it delivers “relevant online answers, better customer service.” I suppose I could interpret this phrase as meaning enterprise search or an Intranet and Web combined search, but I think that would be a real stretch. The company, like others in this list, focuses on customer support. Search is one facet, but it is not the complete system the firm delivers. In fact, the company asserts, “Q-Go guarantees a six month return on investment. Not many search vendors can make this type of statement in my opinion.

RightNow, a TSIA silver partner, is a customer support platform vendor. The company has moved into cloud computing and includes a search and retrieval function in its products. As one of the leaders in call center and related functions, search is important, but RightNow is not a vendor of enterprise search solutions. Maybe the company is moving into this sector? I know that when I hear “RightNow”, I think of the company’s push for “customer experience.” In my files I had a clipping that addressed the function of indexing a Web site with RightNow. The answer in the 2007 item here was that the Web indexer was a separate component. But since 2007, I haven’t seen much about the RightNow search system in the enterprise. Labeling RightNow as a search vendor seems to be a stretch. In 2007, a change to an indexed article required an index rebuild to pick up the change. Not exactly what I prefer.

My view is that the term “search” is used as an umbrella to cover a report about customer support vendors. Some of the vendors deliver full service solutions with search as an after through. Some deliver a specific type of content processing. Some deliver a package search solution tailored to the needs of customer support.

It is confusing to me and probably some potential customers to slap the word “search” on these vendors. Perhaps the report would be more compelling if a more informative title and description were used? Perhaps some of the vendors are stretching their own capabilities to cover this lucrative market for reducing the cost of providing customer service?

Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2010

A freebie.

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