Enterprise Search: Messages Confuse, Confound
March 19, 2015
I review a couple of times a week a free digital “newspaper” called Paper.li. I learned about this Paper.li “newspaper” When Vivisimo sent me its version of “search news.” The enterprise search newspaper I receive is assembled under the firm hand of Edwin Stauthamer. The stories are automatically assembled into “The Enterprise Search Daily.”
The publication includes a wide range of information. The referrer’s name appears with each article. The title page for the March 18, 2015, issue is looks like this.
In the last week or so, I have noticed a stridency in the articles about search and the disciplines the umbrella term protects from would-be encroachers. Search is customer support, but from the enterprise search vendors’ viewpoint, enterprise search is the secret sauce for a great customer support soufflé. Enterprise search also does Big Data, business intelligence, and dozens of other activities.
The reason for the primacy of search, as I understand the assertions of the search companies and the self appointed search “experts” is that information retrieval makes the business work. Improve search. It follows, according to the logic, that revenues will increase, profits will rise, and employee and customer satisfaction will skyrocket.
Unfortunately enterprise search is difficult to position at the alpha and omega of enterprise software. Consider this article from the March 18 edition of The Enterprise Search Daily.
“Why Enterprise Search is a Must Have for Any Enterprise Content Management Strategy”
The article begins:
Enterprise search has notoriously been a problem in the content management equation. Various content and document management systems have made it possible to store files. But the ability to categorize that information intuitively and in a user-friendly way, and make that information easy to retrieve later, has been one of several missing pieces in the ECM market. When will enterprise search be as easy to use and insightful as Google’s external search engine? If enterprise search worked anywhere near as effectively as Google, it might be the versatile new item in our content management wardrobes, piecing content together with a clean sophistication that would appeal to users by making everything findable, accessible and easy to organize.
I am not sure how beginning with the general perception that enterprise search has been, is, and may well be a failure flips to a “must have” product. My view is that keyword search is a utility. For organizations with cash to invest, automated indexing and tagging systems can add some additional findability hooks. The caveat is that the licensee of these systems must be prepared to spend money on a professional who can ride herd on the automated system. The indexing strays have to be rounded up and meshed with the herd. But the title’s assertion is a dream, a wish. I don’t think enterprise content management is particularly buttoned up in most organizations. Even primitive search systems struggle to figure out what version is the one the user needs to find. Indexing by machine or human often leads to manual inspection of documents in order to locate the one the user requires. Google wanders into the scene because most employees give Google.com a whirl before undertaking a manual inspection job. If the needed document is on the Web somewhere, Google may surface it if the user is lucky enough to enter the secret combination of keywords. Google is deeply flawed, but for many employees, it is better than whatever their employer provides.
Another article that I read carries this somewhat negative title:
The idea that enterprise search is irrelevant is the fact upon which the article builds. The forward-leaning “seeking” makes clear that unlike Johnny Cash’s guitar player who “Done found it,” the enterprise search crowd is still “huntin’”.
The article posits:
the user has become subordinate to the system, with little or no effort put into finding out exactly what a user requires from a search application. Instead, we are forced into having all indexed data — emails, files, CRM results, and document management — each in a large separate data silo. It would be better to have federated, full-text search capabilities that provide a superior solution for big data and that meet the needs of the entire organization.
I am not subordinate to my search systems. We use different systems to meet different information needs. I use a patent search system when I look for systems and methods. I use my Intranet systems when I need to locate information on my storage devices. I use iSeek.com, Yandex.com and Yandex.ru when I need non-US information, and a number of other specializes “finding services.” The quote, however, identifies a 40 year old situation; to wit: Vendors say anything to close the deal. The licensee has zero clue what to do. Once the system is rolled out to employees, the licensee’s MBAs say, “Wow, we needed to figure out what we wanted to index, what groups of users needed, and how to deal with security issues. The mistake is baked in to the process of licensing an enterprise search system.
Another article is particularly damning. Its title:
“Enterprise Search Replacement Delivers Transformative Business Value.”
I find that stunningly appropriate for a mid tier consultant, a failed Webmaster specializing in content management, or a former middle school teacher now working in “information science.” What the heck is a “transformative business value.” Businesses today need to make sales, reduce costs, and generate a profit. That is difficult in many industrial sectors. The article argues:
Data that supports the information users are looking for is often scattered in file shares, BI visualizations, streaming data, or even in social media posts, emails or news stories. Traditional search treats each of these sources as the separate silo it is. The cost to enterprises from this information scattershot is far greater than just wasted time: Studies have found information silos to be the biggest impediment to effective decision-making for 56 percent of companies. Today’s users need more than monolithic search capabilities to meet their information needs. Fortunately, technology, such as content analytics and data discovery, is evolving to make information meaningful, accessible and actionable for enterprises in ways not previously possible. Data discovery and content analytics are changing the way users interact with data so they can find all of their relevant information the first time they search. Data discovery finds hidden patterns and trends. It is less structured than BI, which is geared toward monitoring and reporting, and it delivers richer, more contextual results than traditional monolithic search.
How many more buzzwords are in this article? I don’t know. I quit reading about half way through.
Let’s step back and consider what the “enterprise search newspaper” is communicating:
First, it is clear that enterprise search has a problem on its hands. The articles focus on the problems and dither and blow smoke without providing a solution.
Second, the write ups float in space. There are no specifics. I understand confidentiality. It is possible to provide anonymized case examples to give the articles a little bit of substance. Research and substantive detail are not needed when discussing search.
Third, Google is on folks’ mind. I don’t think about Google because I rely on other findability tools. I think that Google has become a superstitious belief among those who have to make sales of keyword search systems toy feed their families and pay their rent. Invoke Google and other failings are explained, sort of.
Fourth, the depth of thinking about “findability” in the enterprise strikes me as shallow. The world has moved away from “enterprise search” and embraced a different type of findability solution. Let me give an example. At the March 2015 Elastic conference in San Francisco, it was clear that speakers were happy to use an open source search system to provide utility functions. The effort saved by using open source was invested in embedding or using search within other software to solve a problem. The focus was not on which search system. The focus was on what can I do once I find information required to answer a question or provide an on-going flow of data for another system. A speaker from Arizona vibrated with solving a problem, not implementing a search system cut off from real user needs.
My personal view is that next generation information systems will be less about keywords and licensing third party metatagging and more about implementing an automated system. My hunch is that enterprise search will continue down the same path like a bowling ball spinning into a gutter only to be returned the the bowler so the ball can find the alley again. Enterprise search keeps missing the pins. Instead of strikes, vendors deliver endless gutter balls.
No strikes for enterprise search vendors or enterprise search consultants if I understand the articles in Paper.li. A happy quack to Real World Physics for the snap of a “real” bowler.
Enterprise search is, in my opinion, a Groundhog Day phenomenon. Time to break the cycle or polish the résumé so a new career can be embraced.
Stephen E Arnold, March 19, 2015
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