Search Done Right

Since the downfall of the economy, many CEOs around the world have been discussing the “new normal.” They are advising corporations to adjust to the new reality of reduced labor forces, smaller budgets and tougher regulations. As I reviewed some articles about this idea, I find that many corporations are now challenging their executive teams to come up with new and innovative ways to increase their top line while reducing their bottom line—all with reduced budgets.

After speaking with our own customer and prospective customer base, I find many organizations working to define the “new normal.”  Business executives are now leading information access projects that until recently have been IT-focused solutions. With the change of ownership, the questions we receive as a solution provider are also changing. Executives are asking business questions first and technology question second.  Instead of hearing question such as, “Do you support late or early binding in your security model?”, we are responding to questions such as “How does your technology drive value by enabling my managers to make better informed decision and identify trends within our content?”

I am also observing that the business side of an organization values different characteristics of our solution. They are no longer asking, “How many days to implement,” but rather, “What is my payback period for the predicted value derived from my solution?” We are seeing prospective buyers seek out business solutions to solve larger problems and deliver impactful results to the top and bottom line. IT is no longer buying search to increase employee satisfaction with improved findability. Instead COOs are purchasing solutions to reduce their overall training costs for their sales and customer service representatives. Their goal is to reduce the time to complete utilization as well as to increase the quality and quantity of work being performed.

In order to deliver results with a strong impact, it can take several weeks to fully quantify the problem with all stakeholders, agree upon a solution, implement a solution, test the usability of the solution and go live. Does this mean that it is a multi-year project? No. But it does mean it may take a few months to build a solution that will result in quantifiable returns. I found the recent blog written by Steve on “Search Deployment Time” to be right on the mark, validating that to execute a business solution effectively takes time. To drive real value, all stakeholders must identify and then commit to a plan for success. Can an organization maximize the value derived from existing (often customized) information assets with a black box that has not been designed to address their unique business and technical challenges? I am skeptical.

In the world of information access and discovery, I believe the “new normal” has been established.  It is one that leads with the business challenges first and technical second. The “new normal” partners the corporation and vendor to force successful delivery of quantifiable results to the business.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 9:06 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.