No one disputes that enterprise data assets are bursting at the seams, and organizations face numerous challenges related to storing and making sense of it all. Historically, as enterprises focused on implementing data prep and analysis solutions, they often overlooked a basic but important part of managing data complexity: the ability to easily and quickly search enterprise data assets and retrieve relevant information.
Until fairly recently, enterprises saw internal search solutions as having minimal or no return on investment; they preferred to expend resources on predictive analysis solutions and other tools that they felt had a more direct impact on their bottom line. However, the tide is now shifting as organizations realize that inefficient enterprise search tools inhibit productivity.
How an efficient enterprise search bolsters productivity
Today’s employees are as connected in their personal lives as they are in the workplace; they’re accustomed to being able to pull out their phones and instantaneously retrieve relevant web results on any topic. Why, these employees wonder, can Google.com search the entire web within moments, but their employers’ internal search tools can’t handle a much smaller library of data?
A slow, user-unfriendly enterprise search tool that returns incomplete, largely irrelevant results isn’t just an annoyance; it gets in the way of employees doing their jobs. IDC estimates that knowledge workers spend about 30% of their workday searching for information they need to do their jobs, and an additional three hours each week recreating content that already exists but that they are unable to locate.[1]
Implementing an effective enterprise search solution could virtually eliminate time wasted on content recreation and, IDC posits, cut search time by more than half. A robust enterprise search provides a myriad of benefits that boost productivity and lead to time and cost-savings. These benefits include:
1. More informed decision-making
If employees cannot locate all of the information they need to make decisions, they’ll make them with the data they can find, which could be outdated or incomplete. This can lead to lost business opportunities and other undesirable outcomes. An effective enterprise search solution delivers all of the information employees need to make sound, reasoned decisions.
2. Easier access to institutional knowledge
Enterprise data assets are a valuable library of institutional research and knowledge. Just as Google.com has made it easy for anyone to get answers to any question, anywhere, at any time, a robust enterprise search solution makes it easy for employees to reference existing internal documents to verify information or leverage existing content.
3. Support of employee onboarding and other HR functions
Employees can use a simple search to access training materials and other employee documents, such as handbooks and benefits forms, freeing up the HR department to work on more complex problems.
4. Improved data governance
Old, forgotten file repositories may contain confidential business information — and be fully accessible to anyone who happens to stumble across them. Armed with a robust enterprise search, organizations can proactively monitor data assets for sensitive information and protect it from unauthorized access.
5. Improved customer service and sales
Customer support staff can easily locate the information they need to resolve customer issues. Sales personnel can quickly match customers with the exact products and services to meet their needs, including add-ons and upgrades.
Google Cloud Search lets you search your enterprise data assets as easily as you search the web
Nobody understands search as well as the undisputed King of Search. Receiving an average of 40,000 queries every second, Google’s web search engine handles over ¾ of all web searches. Google developed Google Cloud Search so that enterprises could enjoy the same efficiency, security, and ease of use when performing internal searches as they do searching the web with Google.
Google Cloud Search is built on the same reliable, secure, and efficient infrastructure that underpins Google.com. It comes with an out-of-the-box user interface that employees will immediately recognize from Google.com. Enterprises can also design custom UIs to support the specific types of queries their employees will be making.
Just like Google’s web search engine, Google Cloud Search uses machine learning to generate query suggestions and retrieve the most relevant results from your enterprise data assets, not only those stored in G Suite but across your enterprise. Google Cloud Search allows your business to index content from third-party sources, including storage solutions, databases, collaboration solutions, ERP, sales and support systems, and home-grown solutions. Whether your business is running on-prem, in the cloud, or a hybrid environment, users get a single tool from which to initiate searches and obtain results.
Google Cloud Search’s privacy and security tools ensure that your internal search solution meets your company’s cybersecurity and compliance requirements. It only indexes content that your organization approves for search. Granular access-level controls can be configured at individual and group levels, as well as according to content, ensuring that each user surfaces only the results they are authorized to view.
In addition to strengthening security, user authentication allows Google Cloud Search to provide a richer experience for users. Google Cloud Search tracks users’ habits and preferences over time to deliver the most relevant results, just like Google.com.
Searching your enterprise data assets should be as fast and easy as searching the web. Google Cloud Search lets your employees spend less time finding what they need and more time innovating and creating.
