Reaching Findability #6

Findability is surprisingly complex due to the large number of measures needed to be understood and undertaken. I believe that one of the principal challenges lies within the pedagogical domain. This is my sixth and last post in a series of simple tips for reaching Findability.

Understand your business case!

Many decisions are based on gut-feeling rather than solid business cases. Improving Findability is often a good investment! Being able to back that statement up with numbers makes it easier to move forward with the decision.

For some applications of search, it is relatively easy to show the benefits in numbers. Improving Findability on a web page can increase conversion rates and online sales, or decrease the need for customer support to mention a few examples.

It is however, more difficult to put numbers on internal applications of search. Finding information quicker and easier obviously saves time, but is time always worth money? I believe the first and foremost benefit may be that decisions can be made based on better information.

If finding relevant information is made quick and easy enough, the will for actually spending time using for decision-making will increase. Search can give you a better overview of what information is available, provide you with information you didn’t know existed or previously didn’t have access to. And it can serve information you might be interested in because of your position and context.

A solid business case for working with search is more or less difficult to find. That does not however, remove the need for working on it. One benefit is keeping focus on what really matters to your organization. Another is convincing others that new ways of working with information, as a strategic asset, matters. Fortunately, there are good methods to find, express and measure the benefits of Findability to make your business case solid!

For some inspiration and insight into the general state of findability you can download and read the report from our global survey, Enterprise Search & Findability Survey 2013.

If you are interested in more details about how to achieve Findability you can also download and read our whitepaper “Best practices for search”!

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