Searching...for Optimal Search Strategies

Q: Can you provide some insight into how enterprise search is being used for electronic discovery needs?

One of the highest costs of the legal discovery process is the review of the multitude of documents that surface during the discovery exercise. There is usually a direct relationship between the number of documents being reviewed and the time and cost of the discovery process. An enterprise search solution can help an organization assess the magnitude of information that a potential discovery action would uncover and also help reduce the number of non-relevant results. Similarly, a search can help determine where the bulk of the information is located, who created it, and provide clues to its accessibility. Moreover, using conceptual search tools and filtering, it is possible to reduce or minimize the amount of documents that will need to be reviewed, by eliminating poor search results and reducing “noise.” This approach has its flaws, however. Search engines often ignore similar or redundant content when creating results lists. Also, depending on how it is configured, search will not return content or information that is protected by security or access controls, or offline content such as information stored on back-up tapes. In addition, there is the difficulty of searching across an entire organization’s desktop and notebook computers. Lastly, there is no guarantee that the process will identify all information relevant to the case.

Q: Do you find that when your customers expand their search project to e-discovery, they have to start from scratch with new products and strategies?

Organizations that have an existing enterprise search solution in place can, of course, gain the benefits listed in the response to the previous question. But legal discovery is not only about finding content, but taking action on that content as well. For example, in a typical discovery exercise, it is necessary to identify relevant information and mark or flag that content so that it cannot be moved or deleted, in a process known as “legal hold.” Only recently has this caught the attention of the major enterprise search vendors, who have been working to add this additional functionality to their flagship enterprise search solutions. For organizations that have already deployed enterprise search products, this new functionality will likely appear as a future upgrade. For those who have enterprise search deployed as part of an enterprise content management (ECM) platform, it is likely that there will be multiple choices: Your ECM vendor may already offer an e-discovery module, or you can purchase third-party solutions to fill in the gaps.

Q: What is the future of social search?

As more organizations deploy social content management tools, such as blogs or other collaborative tools. These content stores are increasingly becoming the main source of “expert knowledge,” even if only on a departmental or divisional level. I t is essential that organizations identify the patterns of this knowledge sprawl, and ensure that their search solutions are actively crawling and indexing these new centers of information. A ll of the enterprise search solutions are currently able to search these emerging kinds of social content, but the picture keeps changing as users find new and innovative ways to collect and share information outside the traditional corporate framework. The challenge will be for search vendors (and those ECM vendors that incorporate these solutions) to keep up with the race, providing a flexible approach to federation, or inexpensive connectors and adapters that will extend the usefulness of their current products.

Q: What synergies are there in implementing enterprise search along with ECM systems?

A t the simplest level, ECM means managing many kinds of organizational content (documents, images, digital assets, Web content, etc.) in a consistent, unified, and sometimes centralized fashion, and then providing “umbrella” services across those content objects. Typical services include library functionality, records management, and workflow. Similarly, search is also a key service that should provide access to all of the content in an ECM repository. For organizations with multiple ECM repositories, a search solution can provide a single interface that provides access to the content in these systems without having to separately search each one.

Jeff Phillips  is a principal consultant with Doculabs.