No strategy, no budget, no resources - yet, Enterprise Search is considered critical success factor in 75% of organisations responding to global survey

There is definitely a large untapped potential for any organisation to get great value from investing in enterprise search. Why do we say that? The growth of information and data makes findability increasingly more critical in order to get the right information to the right person at the right time.  

The Enterprise Search and Findability survey 2012 has shown that a majority of the respondents find it difficult to find relevant information within the organisation. To be more precise, 60% of the respondents expressed that it is very/moderately hard to find the right information. Only 11% stated that it is fairly easy to search for information and as few as 3% consider it very easy to find the desirable information.  

If looking over the next three years, as many as 77% think that the amount of information in the organisation will increase. This suggest that there are or/and will be inefficiencies within organisations, as a majority of the respondents (75%) expressed findability of relevant information to be a critical success factor for their business. But solving the problem of finding the right information is still not a priority in most organisations according to this survey.

No strategy, no budget, no resources. This is the common scenario for enterprise search and findability in many organisations today. Thus addressing those deficiencies in how an organisation manages search can deliver great returns for a relatively small investment, preferably in personnel. It is very important for many organisations to use search as their primary goal to accelerate retrieval of known information sources, 91%, and to improve the re-use of content (information/knowledge), 72%. This indicates that search is often used as a discovery tool for what already is known within the organisations. 

The survey also reveals that amongst the organisations that are very satisfied with their search, they have a (larger) budget, more resources and systematically work with analysing search.

The report is based on an open web survey conducted March to May 2012. 170 respondents (all practitioners) have provided unique responses. Represented are many organisations (66%) with more than 1,000 employees from 28 countries globally, primarily from Europe and North America. This report provides a unique insight into how search is currently being managed, or rather is not being managed, in the best interest of the organisation.

Some of the results have previously been presented at Enterprise Search Europe 2012 (London, 30-31 May), Enterprise Search Summit (New York, 15-16 May), IKS Workshop (Salzburg, 12 June) and Findability Day 2012 (Stockholm, 14 June).