Enterprise Search and Findability Survey in European Union research report

A recently published report from the European Union’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) called “Enterprise Search in the European Union: A Techno-economic Analysis” uses Findwise’s Enterprise Search and Findability Survey (2012) as one of its main sources of information. The report contributes to the work being carried out by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)  on the potential of Search, providing a techno-economic analysis of Enterprise Search in the EU and a discussion of the main challenges and opportunities related to the current state of the Enterprise Search market in Europe.

The report finds two main reasons for adopting a strategy for Enterprise Search; the growth in data generation and a more worrying one - the fact that this huge amount of information is largely unstructured. An estimated 80% of the information stored is either unstructured or has no adequate metadata for the needs of employees.

As noted by Findwise’s Enterprise Search and Findability Survey (2012), quick access to information is of strategic importance in the Information Economy: "The fault does not lie with the technology; rather, most organisations have failed to take a strategic approach to enterprise findability".

Accordingly, many companies implement search in some way, but few of them do it with the thorough thought needed for the solution to leverage the expected value or the expected "return on information".

The 2013 Enterprise Search and Findability Survey is released in August this year.