Deloitte on Top Tech Trends: Where Is Search?
April 27, 2011
Editor’s Note: This is a article written by Iain Fletcher, vice president of Search Technologies. We found his comments about a recent study authored by a top notch team at one of the world’s leading consulting firms interesting and thought provoking.
My colleagues and I were in a client meeting and had a break. One of the documents available to us was Deloitte’s report “Technology Trends 2011. The Natural Convergence of Business and IT.” The report looked interesting and we were able to download a copy of this report from the Deloitte Web site without a fee and without registering.
We found this passage particularly interesting:
… important developments are underway this year, adding compelling new dimensions to the decision process. We recommend taking a fresh look at each (Re)Emerging Enabler to see how it can apply to you in the near term, and whether new investments make sense. Disruptive Deployments require a more creative lens.
We thought the Deloitte approach of identifying enablers such as visualization and security was useful. The report then put the future in perspective by describing disruptive technologies. Among these were analytics, social computing, and mobile solutions. What struck us as interesting was the peppering of “search” throughout the book. There was no pivot point for findability. In our work, we have learned that there is an urgent need to process structured and unstructured information, making it easy for employees to locate needed information in an efficient way, and coping with the problems of “big data”.
I spoke with my colleagues at Search Technologies, which is one of the largest independent search application implementation companies. We agree with most of the Deloitte trends. My take away from our discussion was that unstructured data quality was a key issue for both search across an enterprise and for the identified emerging trend of information visualization. Visualization is an increasingly important part of business intelligence and relies on the quality of the input data. Poor data in means ill-informed decision out, whether via search or any other means.
In today’s financial climate, organizations need to reduce costs. In our experience, employees hunting for information is expensive and inefficient. The cost control is important. As important is the need to improve the efficiency of information retrieval. With search and content processing embedded in work flows, we see search and content processing as a foundation, not an add on or a spice in a consulting engagement.
Second, the merger of business processes and information access extends to the integration of different software systems. There are many buzzwords in use to describe what most senior managers intuitively know; namely, it is easier to make sense of disparate data if the information is presented in a context. Visualization, as Deloitte noted, is an enabler. However, the plumbing and the configuration of the output systems are as important as the attractive graphics. Third, young university graduates do not understand why “silos” of information force them to use multiple enterprise systems and findability solutions. Deloitte did not emphasize the generational divide that we find in some of our engagements. As today’s recent college graduates move upwards and outwards in their careers, their impact will be significant.
For more information about our firm’s approach to technical, engineering, and business consulting, visit www.searchtechnologies.com
Iain Fletcher, April 27, 2011
Search Technologies
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