Enterprise Search

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Get the best search solution for your company

Effective search is essential for your users to find information or products quickly. In usability tests, we've found that a significant percentage of users prefer to use search as their primary means of navigation. This is largely because users assume the information architecture is ineffective.

Contrary to what most search engine companies will tell you, there isn't one search product available that fits perfectly for all companies. As a result, we work with you to determine what kind of searches you need to conduct — enterprise searches, website searches, or highly customized searches. Then we help you select, implement, and optimize the product most capable of achieving your goals — within your budget.

We have a wide breadth of experience with different search products, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for Search, dtSearch Web, Coveo Enterprise Search, MondoSearch, Picosearch, and Verity Ultraseek. This allows us to objectively and skillfully ensure you receive maximum search benefits.

Working with you through the process

While the development of a search solution is unique to your project, the following are some of the common steps in our process:

1. Strategic Planning

  • business analysis
    ensure your search initiative has clear business drivers, that the problems are well understood, and that everyone agrees on the expected outcome

2. Requirements gathering

  • search log audit
    determine what content users are searching for, what keywords they're using, how precise their results are, what content is easy to find, and what content requires better metadata or search configurations
  • content audits
    determine what content we need to search and whether its accessible from a search product and/or whether metadata is necessary

3. Product evaluation and selection

  • technology fit analysis
    identify alternative products, and assess their compatibility with your organization's current technology
  • feature fit analysis
    compare the feature sets between products

4. Physical implementation and configuration

  • installation, configuration, and infrastructure planning (including looking at redundancy and backup plans)
  • integration with existing systems (e.g., databases)

5. Governance

  • implementation of systems to improve search over time, including regular analysis of logs, the inclusion of "best bets" (or other similar product features), and the addition of regular metadata

Learn about MOSS Enterprise Search.