Find. Retrieve. Manage. Your Content. Wherever It Lives.

Webinar Summary

A few short years ago, the push in the enterprise content management space was to consolidate all (or at least the vast majority) of content into a single repository – or as few repositories as possible. However, doing so is a complex undertaking and one that rarely succeeds in a large enterprise. Now, as search technology has matured, it’s possible to keep distributed documents/content/records/etc. in place and meet a diverse range of access requirements at both the enterprise and departmental level.

Key take-aways include:

• Although data doesn’t need to move, organizations should evaluate the pros and cons of providing a centralized vs. decentralized index.
• Centralized indexing can result in simpler queries, faster results and greater consistency. However, relative to decentralized indexing, it entails more overhead to ensure enterprise-wide validity and compliance with security standards.
• Decentralized indexes allow more sensitivity to specialized business contexts. However, decentralization can make it more difficult to integrate result sets from multiple search engines in a meaningful way.
• Three key methods for integrating across decentralized indexes are mashup, interleaving and re-indexing.
• Deciding on the best approach requires looking at the needs of user groups in terms of categorization and relevance ranking, as well as at corporate objectives and culture.
• Many organizations leverage multiple techniques to determine relevancy. These may include statistical, rule-based and/or taxonomic approaches.

Our search strategy service provides flexibility to focus on the key issues your organization faces. For many organizations, a key issue is how to provide enterprise search across distributed content but tailor search to the needs of specific business functions and user communities. An appropriate solution requires either creative use of available tools and resources or investment in new technologies and business processes. This service includes:

A Search Audit

• Based on surveys and interviews, we provide an assessment of the current search environment in terms of findability, performance, and security compliance
• The assessment provides both a quantitative assessment based on our SIX Metrics™ framework and a qualitative review of survey and interview findings

Definition of User, Business and Technical Requirements

• Through a combination of interviews and workshops, we formalize requirements from a user experience, business and technical perspective
• We meet with stakeholders to validate requirements and elicit other considerations

Recommendations

• Based on our findings, we recommend an approach that will work in your organization, including the identification of candidate vendors, internal resources needed, a governance model, and a migration strategy
• We review our recommendations with key stakeholders and assist in planning next steps

Many companies today are extending their enterprise search capability by aggregating results from multiple distributed search engines. This provides an opportunity to leverage prior investments in indexing and content management, while enabling a single comprehensive portal for enterprise search. Federated search projects face many obstacles that can be avoided with proper planning.

This service assists organizations develop objectives, define an approach, and assess risks to their federated search project. The service includes:

Review Sources

• We provide a profile for each search engine or database that will source to the Federated search system. Profiles result from reviewing search logs, indexing and tagging processes, and search engine configuration.

Definition of User, Business and Technical Requirements

• Through a combination of interviews and workshops, we formalize requirements from a user experience, business and technical perspective for effective federated search.
• We meet with stakeholders to validate requirements and elicit other considerations.

Recommendations

• Based on our findings, we recommend an approach to:
  • Centralized Indexing
  • Classification and taxonomy mapping
  • Relevance ranking
  • Presentation of result sets
• We work with your project team to define milestones and tasks, and to plan resources and timeframes needed to realize the federated system.

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