Harnessing Enterprise Search to Boost Knowledge Management

Today’s workplace productivity relies heavily on knowledge. But knowledge alone is not enough. The users, e.g employees, must always be able to find the right information fast. In almost all cases, they look for this information by searching or asking subject matter experts within the company.
In the past, employees and other stakeholders would search for information in places like emails, ERPs, human resource systems, company minutes, etc. But modern technology has entrenched a new way of looking for information within the company – enterprise search.
So how do you harness the power of enterprise search to boost knowledge management systems and give the best experience to users? Let’s find out.
What is enterprise search?
Enterprise search is a custom system that helps employees and other authorized users to search for information that they need to do their work. The source of the information is the company’s data, stored in different locations that are owned or affiliated to the company.
The importance of enterprise search has grown in prominence so much so that the market is projected to grow to $13.3 Billion by 2030. This represents more than double growth compared to the market value back in 2022.
What is knowledge management?
Knowledge management is simply the process of identifying, arranging, storing and generally managing the entire company’s knowledge that is either available in the company’s data systems or via experts that work or do work with the company.
Based on the above two definitions, let’s now see how you can make good use of enterprise search and effectively boost knowledge management in your company.
Benefits that enterprise search brings to knowledge management
The power that is inherent in the knowledge that your company holds is immense. Only when you implement a smart enterprise search system that drives efficient use of this knowledge will you start to realize what golden opportunity the knowledge presents.
These are the benefits of enterprise search for organizations:
1. Enterprise search will boost employee morale
The smooth access to and flow of information within the organization is a key pillar in boosting employee morale.
Enterprise search cultivates an environment where no one is struggling to get information. It means employees are not worried about whether they will get the information they need at any one time. This peace of mind contributes to a happy working environment, which is what every employee needs to thrive.
2. Enterprise search eliminates data overload
It’s always been the case that knowledge is power. While this is true, the other side of the coin is that too much knowledge without an easy way to use it turns into an overbearing information monster.
In the context of the work environment, employees faced with so much information without a clear way to extract value will find it overwhelming. Enterprise search breaks the overload and converts voluminous information into a piece of cake that is not only easy to access but also enjoyable to use.
3. Enterprise search saves a lot of time
Recall the days of scrolling through voluminous spreadsheets in search of some information? How about customer care staff digging through customer emails for information related to a specific customer, while the customer waits on call. These tiring days are all gone with the entry of smart enterprise search.
In the new era, all a user needs to do is enter a query and they get the right information there and then. No waiting, no calls, no memory runs. All that time that employees used to spend looking for information manually is saved. With more time in their hands, they can serve more customers better, get more work done, and bring in more revenue – which is what every company wants!
Which departments can use enterprise search for knowledge management?
Essentially, all departments within the organization can use and derive a lot of benefits from enterprise search. So you should not look at it as a tool that is only suited for certain departments only.
Instead, you should ask what departments can benefit the most, then start with those. That is if you need to prioritize its usage. If this is the case, then these departments are key beneficiaries of enterprise search:
1. Customer service
This is a key department that will feel such a huge relief once they start using enterprise search that factors in their knowledge systems. Imagine your customer service teams being able to find items like policies, response guides for different customer demographics, and historical activities tied to different customers.
Their work revolves around these activities. So when they have a tool in their disposal that enables them to access all the important information in one click, their work becomes more gratifying.
2. Sales and marketing
The sales and marketing team needs a lot of different information to complete their work. Their knowledge bases are filled with all manner of information, from pricing to high potential markets and everything in-between.
Enterprise search provides one-click access to this information, enabling the teams in this department to search intuitively and quickly find knowledge that propels their work. This means they will be able to respond faster to the needs of potential customers, armed with the right information. As a result, marketing campaigns will generate more leads and the sales guys will have easier time converting those leads to paying customers.
3. Human resource
The human resource department is in frequent need of different pieces of information relating to the team. Staff contracts, demographics, salaries and wages, leave days, name it. They can find each of these pieces of information in just one query. No more searching employee information in multiple sources.
The HR usage of enterprise search extends to hiring. The team responsible for hiring new employees can search the potential candidates’ database based on predetermined critical skills, experience, work ethic parameters, salary expectations, references, etc. This simplifies the hiring process, which can often be quite tedious with traditional tools.
4. Management decision making
The management and executive team is always in a race to make decisions touching on a wide array of issues.
Enterprise search software will make their work much easier. All the information they need is a click away – as long as it’s available within the company’s data sources.
Why choose Tricension for your enterprise search
At Tricension, our enterprise search solutions are powered by artificial intelligence technologies like natural language processing and machine learning to easily connect all a company’s data silos. This search solution offers central access from where every user will easily search and quickly find whatever information they need. If it’s within the company’s vast data points, regardless where it’s located, they will find it in a snap!
This is possible through features such as fun-to-use dashboards and smart filters, making it possible for users to search without any restrictions on how to do it. Search the way you want and find what you want.
You can choose to add customized rules to implement policies on data uses. For example, add privacy notes like who should view certain data and for what period of time, then automatically delete time-sensitive information based on the indicated dates.
There is more, including:
1. AI-powered automation
We are certainly in the age of artificial intelligence, and Tricension is at the forefront of utilizing this powerful technology to help company’s derive the most value from their users’ search experiences.
AI enables us to automate previously complex tasks such as the addition of new data, cleaning, tagging and connecting it to the search engine. With AI, most of these tasks become just a matter of set and go.
2. User intent detection
The ability to understand human behavior holds immense power that can be utilized to create personalized service. This is also possible in enterprise search.
We utilize events such as clicks to enable the enterprise search engine to understand the user. Once the system understands the user, it can understand the user’s search intent. The more the system can capture the intent, the more it becomes effective in delivering relevant knowledge.
3. Structured + Unstructured = Smooth index
Experience the power of unified search! No more searching for data that is housed in silos. Whether structured or unstructured, all data is treated as one for the benefit of the users.
You may remember that not long ago, the way enterprise search worked was such that a user had to login into a particular database or system, enter a query and get the information they needed. If you needed information to do with a customer, you had to log into the CRM tool. If you needed information relating to employees, you had to log to the human resource system. We are now putting all this in the past, where it belongs.
With our unified search capabilities, a single content index is created from all the different sources. We then apply ranking to achieve relevance. This makes it possible to achieve more capabilities such as faceting, autocomplete, filtering, and query suggestions. These capabilities are extremely important because the modern user in fact has no time to search. Instead, they want the search engine to learn from their previous interactions and offer relevant information, anticipate their next action, and even interpret what they want – even when they misspell their query terms. We make all this possible.
Conclusion
Enterprise search is indeed a transformative ally of knowledge management. It enables employees to retrieve knowledge tucked in different types of massive data – both structured and unstructured data.
Structured data is mostly found in databases, such as sales and revenue data, employee payroll, supply chain management details, customer support tickets, and marketing campaign metrics.
Unstructured data that is mostly found in places such as emails, document management systems, social media posts, text files, PDFs, and handwritten notes.
A lot of valuable knowledge resides in all these forms of data. When you apply enterprise search tools to this knowledge, you instantly transform the way employees find and use information. This is what your company gets when enterprise search and knowledge management meet.