Is Search the Answer? - ' Page 3'
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Done right, the payoff from search can be huge.
About three years ago, QCSI, a Phoenix-based healthcare software development firm, had a problem.
The feature sets of its product offerings had quadrupled, which left only about 10 percent of the company's employees "knowledgeable" about those products—roughly 15 people out of 150.
These employees were constantly deluged with questions from their coworkers, business partners and customers—and often had to answer the same questions over and over again, like a breed of human search engine.
"About 90 percent of the company's information resided in the heads of about 10 percent of our workforce," says Matt Denison, executive director of knowledge transfer at QCSI.
One employee, Denison says, had more than 2,000 form e-mails at the ready—each one responding to a different question that she was asked repeatedly.
So QCSI's executive team created what it calls the knowledge transfer program. First, Denison interviewed each employee and rated their knowledge based on 14 parameters.
At the same time, he asked the knowledge experts to devote a majority of their time to developing frequently asked questions, which were then reviewed and collated.
That information became part of a companywide training program that taught QCSI employees how to solve more than 200 product-related problems.
Once the data had been gathered and organized, Denison deployed an enterprise search portal, using software from Entopia Inc., that gives employees and clients access to nearly 100 gigabytes of corporate data.
Although he won't disclose actual figures, Denison says the payoff has been huge. For one thing, the new search capability allowed employees to find information more quickly, which helped QCSI deliver a new software application on time and with the fewest number of bugs of any previous product release.
Check out eWEEK.com's for the latest news, views and analysis on enterprise search technology.
"That's something we all attribute in part to operating with this common knowledge," says Denison. What's more, he says, the search application saves each employee 20 minutes per day, which translates into roughly 150 hours of freed-up time per week companywide. "That's big bucks," he says.
Depending on your company's needs, you may not have to spend anything to improve search results.
"Never spend money first," says Gartner's Andrews. "Get the search log for the past three months and find out what people are looking for."
Then, he says, take the top 100 terms, assign business owners to the content and have them create 100 pages that address those issues. "You do that," he says, "and suddenly things start getting better—and you didn't even have to spend any money."
Ask your line-of-business managers:
Is crucial information widely available to employees who need it?
Ask your call-center manager:
How long does it take our people to find the data they need to answer queries?
Ask your CTO:
What is our current search log telling us about our content management?
Story Guide:
Is Search the Answer?
Getting Critical Data Out of Heads and Into Circulation
Content Search is Only as Good as Your Content Management
Done Right, the Payoff From Search Can be Huge
New Features, Deeper Integration Will Make Search Richer
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Enterprise Technology 
