The Mysterious Knowledge Management and Enterprise Search Magic Is Coming Back

March 23, 2023

Note: This post was written by a real, still alive dinobaby. No smart software needed yet.

In the glory days of pre-indictment enterprise search innovators, some senior managers worried that knowledge loss would cost them. The fix, according to some of the presentations I endured, was to use an enterprise search system from one of the then-pre-eminent vendors. No, I won’t name them, but you can hunt for a copy of my Enterprise Search Report (there are three editions of the tome) and check out the companies’ technology which I analyzed.

The glory days, 2nd edition is upon us if I understand “A Testing Environment for AI and Language Models.”

Not having information generates “digital friction.” I noted this passage:

According to a recent survey of 1,000 IT managers at large enterprises, 67% expressed concern over the loss of knowledge and expertise when employees leave the company. The cost of knowledge loss and inefficient knowledge sharing is significant, with IDC estimating that Fortune 500 companies lose approximately $31.5 billion each year by failing to share knowledge. This figure is particularly alarming, given the current uncertain economic climate. By improving information search and retrieval tools, a Fortune 500 company with 4,000 employees could save roughly $2 million per month in lost productivity. Intelligent enterprise search is a critical tool that can help prevent information islands and enable organizations to effortlessly find, surface, and share knowledge and corporate expertise. Seamless access to knowledge and expertise within the digital workplace is essential. The right enterprise search platform can connect workers to knowledge and expertise, as well as connect disparate information silos to facilitate discovery, innovation, and productivity.

Yes, the roaring 2000s all over again.

The only question I have is what start up will be the “new” Autonomy, Delphi, Entopia, Fast Search & Transfer, Grokker, Klevu, or Uniqa, et al? Which of the 2nd generation of enterprise search systems will have an executive accused of financial Fancy Dancing? What will the 2nd edition’s buzzwords do to surf on AI/ML, neural nets, and deep learning?

Exciting. Will these new systems solve the problem of employees’ quitting and taking their know how and “knowledge” with them? Sure. (Why should I be the one to suggest that investors’ dreams could be like Silicon Valley Bank’s risk management methods? And what about “knowledge”? No problem, of course.

Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2023

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