Corporate Information … single source or single search?
Recently, we have been talking about creating a single repository for IT Services departmental information. The idea being that our team members need to go to one place to get the information they are looking for. Instead of wasting time looking at multiple repositories each with their own taxonomies, UX and search features, put it all in one place with one UX and taxonomy.
Today, my thinking took a 180 degree turn with a vendor presentation on “enterprise search“. Instead of making people conform to rigid rules about where to put information, what if we gave them a tool to find the data wherever it resides behind our firewalls? Like someone said today, “Google search for our stuff”
No some of you might say, not taking time to architect an information repository and relying on a search engine is the lazy way out. I have some thoughts that I hope will make you think otherwise. When presented with business challenges, I find it is rarely the technology that is the problem. Instead, it is the ease of use for our clients, customers and stakeholders that should be considered. Enforcing compliance is expensive and in many cases ineffective. What if we made it easy for people to comply? Educate them on some simple tagging and then let them work like they always have. The difference is giving them a tool to search for what they need and work to tune that tool so that we see a significant reduction is costly “Search and not find” scenarios.
