Many organizations don’t know what to expect from search, therefore don’t invest into it at all. Many want to have “quick wins” instead of committing to a long-term strategy: they want to implement changes or enhancements that require minimal effort to drive business value in the short term. On the other hand, Search has to be the part of the company’s business strategy and roadmap, to maximize its long-term business value and benefits. In this workshop, Agnes will provide practical guidance on where to invest your time and resources. For long-term planning, she’ll provide an overview of industry trends and how to establish a value proposition and sell to the business. For your short-term benefits, she helps to set up an action plan which you can implement immediately.

1. Why You Need to Invest
into Search
and how to Start this Journey?
Agnes Molnar, 2019
Agnes.Molnar@SearchExplained.com
@molnaragnes / @SearchExplained

2. Be Sure To Thank Our Sponsors!

3. WHY?

4. The Plan…

5. The Reality…

6. LAY OF THE LAND

7. Lay of the Land:
Information and application silos
Marketing Sales ProcurementConsulting Research HR / LegalSupportProduction
Content
Silos
Siloed UI
Applications

8. The Reality in Most Cases…

9. The Enterprise Search Promise
RDBMS
(JDBC, ODBC,
SQLNet, DW,
DM)
Applications
(e.g. ERM, CRM,
Help Desk)
Legacy Data
(e.g. ISAM,
VSAM, IMS)
Message Queues
(e.g. TIBCO,
MQ-Series)
DMS
(e.g. M’Soft CMS,
Documentum)
eMail Systems
(e.g. Notes,
Exchange)
Files
(e.g. Word, Excel,
pdf, images, mp3)
Portals
(e.g. WebSphere,
WebLogic)
WWW
(HTML, XML, WML,
JavaScript)
Private Webs
(e.g. news feeds,
Intranets)
Direct
Push
UNSTRUCTUREDSTRUCTURED
REAL--TIME
Enterprise Search
Platform
SITESEARCH
MAILSEARCH
BISEARCH
DMSSEARCH
CORPORATE
SEARCH
ECOMMERCE
SEARCH
…

10. SEARCH IS INCREDIBLE
WHEN DONE WELL

11. Search is more than the technology
Source: http://searchpatterns.org
Search managers must work
with the whole system

12. A Recipe for Improving Search

16. Food Recipes

22. “The No. 1 thing you can
do to increase relevance
is to attend to your content.”

23. The Paradox
of Content

24. KEEP &
RE-ORGANIZEKEEP &
“FREEZE”
DELETE /
ARCHIVE

25. Selecting Sources
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ImpactofContent
Onboarding & Cleanup Effort
Content Sources for Onboarding
a R&D projects - reports
b R&D projects - research notebooks
c Historical projects (OCR)
d Prototype data
e Lab notes
f Patent prep library
g CAD drawings
h Testing/Stress Data
i Design Patterns
j Technical Data Sheets
k Expert Profiles
l Regulation Database
m Subscription (OneSource, Lexis)
n Industry database
o Competitor Web Crawling
p Industry patents
q Newswires

31. Search:
User – Context – Content
Content:
Document types, objects, structure, attributes,
metadata
[How to describe the information]
Users:
Information needs, audience types, expertise,
tasks
[Who needs the Information]
Context:
Business models & goals, corporate culture,
resources
[How the information is used]
Context
UsersContent

33. Metadata in Traditional Faceted Search
33
Recall and Relevance
hits on properties.
Properties
Content annotated manually or automatically –
concepts, categories, citations, matters,
clients, etc
Navigation Controls
Explore, Discover, Drill-down
Related Searches / Documents
Relationships defined by metadata.

35. Search Strategy
Without Strategy
• Low adoption
• Project failures
• Frustration and chaos
• Inefficiency / loss of productivity
• Compliance breaches and penalties
• Errors and misinformed decisions
• Lack of agility / missed
opportunities
• Competitive losses
With Strategy
• Higher project success & adoption
• Better resilience to change
• Higher Productivity & Efficiency
• Lower legal and compliance risk &
cost
• Better decision making
• Higher Agility
• Competitive Advantage

36. Search Team – Involve & Get Involved!
Source: http://searchpatterns.org

37. Define your requirements
Business
goals
Users
Scenarios
& use cases
Application
Lifecycle
Systems to
integrate
User
Experience
Metrics Milestones
Resources Experts

38. Evolution
• Search is a “product”, not a one-time project
Time
v1.0 v2.0 v3.0
Minor updates
1-2 year(s) 1-2 year(s)

39. Avoid the Search Immaturity Cycle
Surveys
Questionnaires
Feedback
The problem must
be the content is not
indexedRFI/RFP
Frustration
Root cause
analysis
Attempt fix
Request
feedback
The
Enterprise
Search Cycle

40. Session Recap

41. Resources
• Search Explained
– www.searchexplained.com
• SharePoint Search Query Tool
– http://bit.ly/abQueryTool
• Search Queries Explained
– https://bit.ly/abQueryBook
• Jumpstarting Search in SharePoint (2013/2016/2019)
– https://academy.searchecplained.com
• SharePoint Search Back to Front
– https://bit.ly/abSearch

42. JOIN US FOR CAKE AS WE CELEBRATE 10 YEARS OF WOMEN IN
SHAREPOINT WITH A “WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY PANEL” HEADED BY
MICRSOSOFT’S CATHY DEW. FRIDAY MARCH 15TH 2:50—3:50 IN
TANEYCOMO B BALLROOM
of Women in SharePoint

43. Win a Surface Book courtesy of
Microsoft!
Play Vendor Bingo, Winner drawn during
closing session on Friday

44. Thank You!
Agnes.Molnar@SearchExplained.com
https://SearchExplained.com/nacs