Search Conferences 2011

During 2011 a large number of search conferences will take place all over the world. Some of them are dedicated to search, whereas others discuss the topic related to specific products, information management, usability etc.

Here are a few that might be of interest for those of you looking to be inspired and broaden your knowledge. Within a few weeks we will compile all the research related conferences – there are quite a few of them out there!
If there is anything you miss, please post a comment.

March
IntraTeam Event Copenhagen 2011
Main focus: Social intranets, SharePoint and Enterprise Search
March 1, 2 and 3, 2011, Copenhagen, Denmark

Webcoast
Main focus: A web event that is an unconference, meaning that the attendees themselves create the program by presenting on topics of their own expertise and interest.
March 18-20 , Gothenburg, Sweden

Info360
Main focus: Business productivity, Enterprise Content Management, SharePoint 2010
March 21-24, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, USA

April
International Search Summit Munich
Main focus: International search and social media.
4th April 2011, Hilton Munich Park Hotel, Germany

ECIR 2011: European Conference on Information Retrieval
Main focus: Presentation of new research results in the field of Information Retrieval
April18-21, Dublin, Ireland

May
Enterprise Search Summit Spring 2011
Main focus: Develop, implement and enhance cutting-edge internal search capabilities
May 10-11, New York, USA

International Search Summit: London
Main focus: International search and social media
May 18th, Millennium Gloucester Hotel, London, England

Lucene Revolution
Main focus: The world’s largest conference dedicated to open source search.
May 25-26, San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency, USA

SharePoint Fest – Denver 2011
Main focus: In search track: Enterprise Search, Search & Records Management, & FAST for SharePoint
May 19-20, Colorado Convention Center, USA

June
International Search Summit Seattle
Main focus: International search and social media
June 9th, Bell Harbor Conference Center, Seattle, USA

2011 Semantic Technology Conference
Main focus: Semantic technologies – including Search, Content Management, Business Intelligence
June 5-9, Hilton Union Square, San Francisco, USA

October
SharePoint Conference 2011
Main focus: SharePoint and related technologies
October 3-6, Anaheim, California, USA

November
Enterprise Search Summit Fall Nov 1-3
Main focus: How to implement, manage, and enhance search in your organization
Integrated with the KMWorld Conference, SharePoint Symposium and Taxonomy Bootcamp,

KM-world
(Co-locating with Enterprise Search Summit Fall, Taxonomy Boot Camp and Sharepoint Symposium)
Main focus: Knowledge creation, publishing, sharing, finding, mining, reuse etc
November 1 – 3, Washington Marriott Wardman Park, Washington DC, USA

Gilbane group Boston
Main focus: Within search: semantic, mobile, SharePoint, social search
November 29 – December 1, Boston, USA

Findability in Customer Service Search

We have previously introduced Findability by Findwise, involving solutions that make optimal use of search technology to support and strengthen the business of our customers. In a series of blog posts we will present how findability solutions can be deployed within different parts of your organisation. Initially I will focus on how efficient implementation of search technology, by a good customer service search, can improve your customer service offering.

Ultimately, the goal of most customer service interactions is to increase customer satisfaction and thereby improve customer retention in a cost efficient way. In times when the amount of available information increases by the minute, one key success factor is to provide both customer service agents and customers with quick and easy access to relevant information. A findability solution based on state-of-the-art search technology and optimised along the findability dimensions will fuel your customer service search offering in two primary ways:

  1. Improved support to customer service agents
  2. Improved online customer service

Example of customer service search

Improved support to customer service agents

While more traditional customer service interaction solutions tend to be based on a knowledge database, that needs to be built and maintained, a Findability solution is more dynamic in its nature and is based on a dynamic search index created by the already existing data residing in corporate systems. In other words, the solution makes optimal use of existing information and systems to support customer service agents in accessing relevant information. The positive effects are illustrated by the case study below.

Case study: Telecom call centre

Findwise implemented a findability solution at a call centre for a large Swedish mobile operator. The solution introduced the powerful ability to search in the most important information source, which previously only had been accessible via tree-structure navigation.

The graph below presents the result of a test performed by the call centre agents to evaluate the new search function. The test encompassed a number of tasks in which the agents compared using the search functionality to the traditional navigation, in terms of both level of difficulty and time consumption in finding desired information. The graph shows that the agents found the search function very helpful, making the information both easier and less time consuming to find.

 The graph shows that the agents found the customer service search function very helpful, making the information both easier and less time consuming to find.

The most evident effects of improved support and information access via search technology are:

  • Reduced handling time
  • Higher first time resolution
  • Reduced Tier-2 escalations
  • Increased customer service agent satisfaction
  • Increased agent productivity
  • Less training needed to introduce new agents

In a white paper, Google has also pinpointed, and quantified, the above benefits of implementing a Findability solution in call centre operations, in this case fuelled by the Google Search Appliance (GSA) search platform. For example, Google states that handling time can be reduced by up to 20% on average and that is it possible to save up to 25% on training costs for each new call centre agent. The full article is available here.

Improved online customer service

Naturally a Findability solution can also improve your online customer service offering. Below I have outlined three solution elements that will help drive customer self-service and thereby deflect issues from being forwarded to the customer service organisation.

Improved search functionality

As in the case of agent support, a powerful search functionality that provides relevant information from all required sources in a user-friendly way will increase the ability of customer self-resolution.

Personalised user interface

Using the power of an enterprise search platform you can customise the self-service experience, in a dynamical way, to the individual and the incident to simplify and speed up the process of finding answers.

Dynamic FAQ

Self-service can also be fuelled by providing a relevant and updated FAQ section. The information can be made dynamic and include answers to the most recent questions by using both query log information, i.e. what users are searching for, and call centre comments as input to the FAQs.

For many enterprises, self-service is seen as the solution that can provide customers with the support they need while significantly reducing customer service costs. However, self-service must do more than just cut costs. When customers perceive self-service as simply a means to shift interaction costs onto their shoulders, it can reduce customer satisfaction. Customers need a self-service experience that provides them with higher levels of interaction convenience and information availability, faster issue resolution and more personalised interactions. A Findability solution including the above elements provides that.

The most evident effects of an improved online customer service offering gained from the use of search technology and search analytics are:

  • Less number of incoming calls/e-mails
  • Increased customer satisfaction
  • Increased browser- to-buyer conversion rate
  • Increased knowledge of user interests and behaviour (to fuel additional sales)

Visit our website to learn more about findability solutions that make our customers truly benefit from state-of-the-art search technology.

Enterprise Search and Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Search is a never ending story

A number of years ago Gartner coined “Biggle” – which was an expression for BI meeting Google. Back then a number of BI vendors, among them Cognos and SAS, claimed that they were working with enterprise search strategically (e.g. became Google One-box partners). Search vendors, like FAST, Autonomy and IBM also started to cooperate with companies such as Cognos. “The Adaptive Warehouse” and “BI for the masses” soon became buzzwords that spread in the industry.

The skeptics claimed that enterprise search never would be good at numbers and that BI would never be good with text.

Since then a lot a lot has happened and today the major vendors within Enterprise Search all claim to have BI solutions that can be fully integrated (and the other way around – BI solutions that can integrate with enterprise search).

The aim is the same now as back then:  to provide unified access to both structured (database) and unstructured (content) corporate information. As FAST wrote in a number of ‘Special Focus’:

“Users should have access to a wide variety of data from just one, simple search interface, covering reports, analysis, scorecards, dashboards and other information from the BI side, along with documents, e-mail and other forms of unstructured information.”

And of course, this seems appealing to customers. But does access to all information really make us more likely to take the right decisions in terms of Business Intelligence. Gartner is in doubt.

Nigel Rayner, research vice president at Gartner Inc, says that:

”The problem isn’t that they (users) don’t have access to information or tools; they already have too much information, and that’s just in the structured BI world. Now you want to couple it with unstructured data? That’s a whole load of garbage coming from the outside world”.

But he also states that search can be used as one part of BI:

“Part of the problem with traditional BI is that it’s very focused on structured information. Search can help with getting access to the vast amount of structured information you have”

Looking at the discussions going on in forums, in blogs and in the research domain most people seem to agree with Gartner’s view: enterprise search and business intelligence makes a powerful combination, but the integrations needs to be made with a number of things in mind:

Data quality

As mentioned before, if one wants to make unstructured and structured information available as a complement to BI it needs to be of a good quality. Knowing that the information found is the latest copy and written by someone with knowledge of the area is essential. Bad information quality is a threat to an Enterprise Search solution, to a combined BI- and search solution it can be devastating. Having Content Lifecycles in place (reviewing, deleting, archiving etc) is a fundamental prerequisite.

Data analysis

Business Intelligence in traditionally built on pre-thought ideas of what data the users need, whereas search gives access to all information in an ad-hoc manner. To combine these two requires a structured way of analyzing the data. If the unstructured information is taken out of its context there is a risk that decisions are built on assumptions and not fact.

BI for the masses?

The old buzzwords are still alive, but the question mark remains. If one wants to give everyone access to BI-data it has to be clear what the purpose is. Giving people a context, for example combining the latest sales statistics with searches for information about the ongoing marketing activities serves a purpose and improves findability. Just making numbers available does not.

enterprise search and business intelligence dashboard

Business intelligence and enterprise search in a combined dashboard – vision or reality within a near future?

So, to conclude: Gartner’s vision of “Biggle” is not yet fulfilled. There are a number of interesting opportunities for the business to create findability solutions that combines business intelligence and enterprise search, but the strategies for adopting it needs to be developed in order to create the really interesting cases.

Have you come across any successful enterprise search and business intelligence integrations? What is your vision? Do you think the integration between the two is a likely scenario?

Please let us know by posting your comments.

It’s soon time for us to go on summer vacation.

If you are Swedish, Nicklas Lundblad from Google had an interesting program about search (Sommar i P1) the other day, which is available as a podcast.

Have a nice summer all of you!

Smooth CMS Migration Through Enterprise Search

Recently Findwise supported a successful CMS migration project for a worldwide customer in the furniture business by utilising enterprise search.

The goal of the project was to migrate from an old Content Management System (CMS) to a new CMS to meet the new demands of the organisation, and at the same time making least possible impact for the end-user throughout the migration process.

With support from Findwise and using the connectivity possibilities of an Enterprise Search Platform, content from both CMS’s could be indexed and searchable concurrently as more and more content got migrated to the new CMS. Also the new navigation structure of the Intranet was introduced step by step and reflected in the Search solution.

The power of Enterprise Search technology have once again been proven to provide an abstraction layer to underlying information sources and support the business, even when the information architecture is changing dramatically.

How Do You Measure Success on Your Intranet?

An intranet should, from my perspective, serve the people looking for general information as well as the ones who need specific information to solve an urgent task this very minute.
During the last few weeks I’ve been participating in many and interesting meetings which all have raised the question of how to measure success when it comes to finding content and people on your intranet. When working with enterprise search you often use the time you save as an important parameter. “If the users can find what they are looking for, then their everyday work will be more effective. Hereby we can save the user time and the company money”. This is an obvious truth, but I believe that there is more to consider.

If you use your intranet as a way for your employees not only to find information, but also share and collaborate it’s just as important that you find information that is related to you query (that you sometimes didn’t even know existed!), that makes you gain deeper knowledge and hence become more innovative. How do you measure success in those areas? There is a need for discussing supplementary new ways to measure Key Performance Indicators, perhaps by using more qualitative tools and focusing on user experience (of information retrieval, content quality and experienced value) over time.

What is your opinion? Do these things need to be measured in “hard facts” or can we find other ways to measure the value we deliver to our users?