Enterprise Search Implementation: Key Challenges and Solutions

CIO Applications| Tuesday, June 15, 2021

While workplace search engines have improved in recent years, many employees still have no idea how to utilize them. This has the potential to stifle production.

Fremont, CA: Enterprise search is a problem-solving tool that is one of the most effective for firms dealing with vast amounts of data, documents, and other assets. Enterprise search technologies have boosted productivity and made it easier to coordinate operations across the organization. Users can rapidly find important information by using an excellent corporate search tool.

However, developers of workplace search programs and the programs themselves confront numerous problems, including:

Poor understanding of search user behavior: The world has become data-driven. If you own a website, you can use Google Analytics to learn more about your visitors' habits and, ultimately, outcomes. While the majority of enterprise search engine developers have been studying user behavior, many do not have access to good analytics software. Finally, enterprise search engine businesses do not have as much information about their consumers as they would like.

Unstructured data: Unstructured data is information that doesn't have a predetermined data model or isn't organized in a specific way. Many of the data sets that people work with daily are structured and organized. It's a lot easier to work with now. However, between 80 and 90 percent of the data produced by a company is unstructured. Sifting through and working with such material might be difficult for search engines.

Security risks: Enterprise search solutions, like any other IT system, especially one that is connected to the internet, must deal with security issues regularly. Hackers would love nothing more than to gain access to a company's data and documents by hijacking an enterprise search solution. Indeed, an effective corporate search engine in the wrong hands could jeopardize much of a company's most critical information.

Inadequate employee training: A company's search engine is only as good as the person who uses it. While workplace search engines have improved in recent years, many employees still have no idea how to utilize them. This has the potential to stifle production. Expect usability to become more critical as enterprise search technologies become more fully integrated within enterprises.

Imprecise Metadata: Metadata can be set and ignored for future projects, such as author fields and individual blog post tag lines. When new blogs are published, or a new author takes over, the metadata must be updated so that the file may be correctly indexed by business search. Large business search issues are caused by inaccurate metadata. Incorrectly labeled data is more challenging to locate.