82% report that their experience with “consumer Web” has created demand for improved enterprise findability
Silver Spring, MD – June 24, 2008 – According to data
collected from over 500 business users and soon to be released in an AIIM
Market IQ on Findability, 82% of respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed”
that their experience with consumer Web sites has created demand for improved
enterprise findability within their own organizations. “The consumer-facing Web
has a number of clear guidelines for success in Findability such as the impact
on revenue, costs, and marketing,” states AIIM Director Dan Keldsen. “Sales and
increased revenue are the main measures of success and are easily quantified.
Other examples include: shortened customer support resolution times; increased
trials of subscription services, and conversions of trials to full purchases. In
the enterprise, Findability success is more difficult to come by, primarily
because hardly anyone is measuring it.”
Source: AIIM Market Intelligence, 2008
Most organizations have failed to take a strategic approach to enterprise
search. 49% of respondents have “no formal goal” for enterprise
Findability within their organizations, and a large subset of the overall
research population state that when it comes to the “Criticality of Findability
to their Organization’s Business Goals and Success”, 38% have no idea (“don’t
know”) what the importance of Findability is in comparison to a mere 10% who
claim Findability is “imperative” to their organization.
Perhaps more telling than the general Web experience for Findability, and
impact on enterprise users, is the finding that 50% of respondents believe that
Findability in their organization is “worse” to “much worse” than their own
organization’s consumer-facing Web sites.
Source: AIIM Market Intelligence, 2008
“The publishing revolution has taken hold in enterprises, but while tools
abound to create information, adoption of smarter approaches to finding and
using information has lagged,” states AIIM Vice President Carl Frappaolo. “As
information has become more and more digital, from creation through to
management, the pain of finding enterprise information has moved from the piles
of paper on the desktop and in storage cabinets to the digital landfill of file
servers, e-mail inboxes, digital desktops, and content management systems.
Despite the advances made in search on the Web, enterprise search leaves most
users frustrated.”
Finding content digitally is only possible if pointers to content or the
content itself are in native digital format, made available for indexing by
search, and/or accessible by information organization and access techniques
(such as navigational structures, taxonomies, bookmarks, etc.). The lack of such
functionality in the enterprise is at the heart of user frustration.
Faulty (to non-existent) understanding, strategy, implemented plans and
technological pros and cons to address Findability in the enterprise continue to
cause pain in most organizations, although slow progress is being made. Finding
the successful practices from consumer-facing applications, and applying them
(as applicable) to internal applications, are a few of the fundamental keys to
increasing the success of Findability in the enterprise.
For further details on this study, AIIM is hosting a Special Webinar on
Thursday, June 26th at 2:00 PM EDST for organizations interested in the major
findings. Register for this FREE Webinar, presented by the report authors, by
going to http://www.aiim.org/Events/register.aspx?id=179.
The companion research paper, the AIIM Market IQ on Findability,
will be published in July 2008, and is anticipated to be over 70 pages long,
with over 50 charts/figures.
About AIIM
AIIM (www.aiim.org) is the
community that provides education, research, and best practices to help
organizations find, control, and optimize their information.
For over 60 years, AIIM has been the leading non-profit organization focused
on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing
documents, content, records, and business processes. Today, AIIM is
international in scope, independent, implementation-focused, and, as the
representative of the entire ECM industry - including users, suppliers, and the
channel - acts as the industry's intermediary.
AIIM was founded in 1943 as the National Microfilm Association and later
became the Association for Information and Image Management. AIIM is also known
as the Enterprise Content Management Association.
###
For more information, contact:
Beth Mayhew
Director,
Marketing
301.755.2681
bmayhew@aiim.org
Carl Frappaolo
Vice President
617.933.2584
cfrappaolo@aiim.org
AIIM - Find, Control, and Optimize Your Information
1100 Wayne Avenue,
Suite 1100, Silver Spring, MD 20910, 301.587.8202