Enterprise Search, 2nd Edition

Chapter 9. Making a Business Case

The preceding chapters have provided a background to search management with a focus on search technology. Now the emphasis shifts toward the management of search. This chapter sets out the due diligence that needs to be undertaken before considering any significant upgrade of an existing application or the implementation of a new application. The 2014 Findwise Enterprise Search and Findability Survey asked respondents if they had a strategy for search. The outcome was as follows:

• IT focused strategy (11%)
• Business focused strategy (9%)
• Combined business/IT strategy (17%)
• Not yet but planned (29%)
• No (28%)
• Did not know (6%)

The AIIM survey in 2014, where the majority of respondents were from North America, indicated that only just over 12% had a search strategy. Because almost every employee in the organization will use search applications on a reasonably regular basis, this lack of strategy and therefore of overall planning, is a concern.

The search engine will need to interface with other applications, and there are some legal and compliance issues. In the future, the boundaries between search, business intelligence, and content analytics are going to become increasingly blurred, and delivering access to enterprise search through mobile devices is going to be essential within a year or so.

In this chapter, some of the core elements for a search business case are considered. Appendix A then sets out these and other elements in an A–Z list of ...