SharePoint 2013 - Planning a Search Strategy

The Olympic Games and US Presidential Elections come around every four years but SharePoint upgrades come on a three year cycle. There are still organizations using SharePoint 2007 and in the process of migrating to SharePoint 2010 and now we have SharePoint 2013 in all its glory.  

Microsoft also seems to be hinting that in future there could be more frequent upgrades. Before long you will probably be able to major in Microsoft Upgrade and Migration Planning at most major universities.

My particular interest is in enterprise search and here I have to congratulate Microsoft on the progress it has made since the fairly terrible search functionality in SharePoint 2007. The company was also smart enough to go out and buy FAST Search and Transfer in 2008, but not quite smart enough about financial due diligence and building a sensible search technology strategy for itself and for SharePoint.

The Technology Story So Far

The immediate result was the arrival of FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010, abbreviated to FS4SP. This took a lot of the components of FAST ESP 5.3, suitably modified to SharePoint 2010, and offered a substantial enhancement to SharePoint Search 2010 which itself was a significant leap forward from the search offering in SharePoint 2007.

Two issues immediately became obvious. First, many companies were convinced that they now had a licence for FAST ESP 5.3 and had no idea of the real state of affairs. Second, no one in the Microsoft partner community had any idea of how to get the best (or indeed anything at all!) out of FS4SP. My experience says that not that much has changed since launch unless the company has brought in external implementation expertise.

In 2010 Wrox published "Professional Microsoft Search" by Mark Bennett and his colleagues that covered all the Microsoft search products (including FAST ESP 5.3) in 450 pages. It is an excellent book because of the substantial amount of guidance it gives on the skills and management attention needed to get the best out of any search application.

It was not until earlier this year that Microsoft itself published "Working with Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint," which runs to 450 pages just on FS4SP. There are so many omissions from this book that it would take me the rest of this column to list them, but the most notable are no references at all to using search logs to manage search performance and a total absence of any indications of the staffing requirements to support the product. It creates the impression that search implementation is a project, when at the minimum it is a program and in reality it is a journey without end. 

The other significant problem is that (unlike the Wrox book) the book does not tell you what FS4SP does not do. A good example is document thumbnails, which out of the box are only supported for Word documents and Powerpoint files. Certainly there are some good third-party solutions (Documill comes to mind) but that misses the point.

Fortunately there are many excellent search implementation companies (Comperio, Findwise, Raytion and Search Technologies for example) that can really make FS4SP sing and dance but that inevitably adds to the implementation cost. Even then, any company running FS4SP probably needs a search support team of at least 3-4 people full time. A look at Sadie van Buren’s invaluable SharePoint benchmarking service shows search way down the list in maturity of implementation.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Business Process & Architecture Forum Focuses on Digital Disruption #ForrForum

At its 2012 Business Process & Architecture Forum, which will be held October 18-19 in Orlando, FL, Forrester Research is focusing squarely on effectively managing digital disruption in the enterprise. In an interview with CMSWire, Forrester Research Director Steve Powers explained the philosophy on digital disruption attendees can expect to learn about.

Customer Experience Evolution Creates Disruption

“We’re seeing the whole idea of customer experience changing very quickly,” said Powers. “There is a customer inflection point where the customer will either continue to work with you or try someone else. Customer experience is a huge factor in influencing the outcome of that inflection point.”

Powers said the rapid evolution of multichannel and cross-channel customer interaction, as well as increased expectations for personalized service, present a serious technological challenge. “Traditional IT teams can’t keep up,” he said.

Agile Response Combats Disruption

As a result, Powers said marketing teams often outsource or subsource their technology needs.

“What do you, as an IT department, have to do to get marketing to work with you and not around you?” he asked.

The answer, according to Powers, is a dismantling of the traditional silos separating IT and marketing. He gave the example of one Forrester client who embedded the IT and marketing departments into a “digital experience group." This got IT involved in developing marketing tools during the initial design process, instead of serving as a “black box” at the end of the project. He also mentioned that some companies maintain a traditional IT department but divide it into a front office group responsible for designing and delivering customer experience, and a back office group responsible for functions such as ERP and HR.

Powers also advised companies to consider a best-of-breed approach when implementing customer experience technologies — but cautioned against using too many different point solutions. “No one vendor can provide all the right components,” he said. “You should use solution sets from different vendors and see how to tie them together.”

For example, Powers said an organization might use marketing automation and testing/optimization tools from one vendor and then integrate them with e-commerce and analytics tools from another.

Key Sessions on 'Disrupting' Disruption

Several key sessions during the Forrester conference will focus specifically on how companies can disrupt disruption, so to speak, by using technology and business process to turn digital customer experience trends to their advantage. They include:

• Thursday, Oct. 18, 8:45-9:15 AM - The Disruptor's Handbook: How To Make The Most Of Digital Disruption: This keynote from James L. McQuivey, Ph.D., Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will help attendees understand the transformative effect of digitally empowered customers, assess their company's readiness for digital disruption internally and externally, and adopt the skills and policies that accelerate their organization's embrace of digital disruption.
• Thursday, Oct. 18, 11:25 AM - 12:10 PM - Implementing The Different In The Age of Digital Disruption: Craig Le Clair, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will explain how to make the shift from analog to digital business processes and use mobile as a catalyst for driving digital process transformation.
• Thursday, Oct. 18, 4:05 PM - 04:35 PM - Don’t Let Digital Disruption Cause Information Corruption: Michele Goetz, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research will discuss a framework for data quality to ensure that customers can rely on the information they use on any device from laptops to mobile.
• Friday, Oct. 19, 1:15 – 1:45 PM – Innovating for Disruption: Nigel Fenwick, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will explain how business architecture can help integrate innovation into existing planning processes.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Seeing is Believing: Catalyst Insight Offers Visual Analytics

Thanks to the rise of Big Data, the process of eDiscovery has become more important to the enterprise. While there are there are many tools and platforms that make it easier and faster to sift through Big Data, have you ever really seen your data? Catalyst says that they have the solution.

Now You See It …

Thanks to Insight, the next generation eDiscovery platform from Catalyst, companies can see their data for the first time. Engineered from the ground up, Catalyst Insight harnesses the power of an XML engine — combining metadata, tags and text in a unified, searchable data store. As a result, Insight provides users with visual analytics that let users see deep into their data, and with timelines and social-networking diagrams, which are updated instantly thanks to a "Smart" coding feature (which learns from your review team).

But visual analytics are only as good as the speed and precision at which they are generated. Fortunately, Insight features unprecedented speed for complex searches involving millions of documents, as well as the ability to conduct searches with strings of up to one million characters.

We spoke with John Tredennick, CEO at Catalyst and he gave us a real-time demo of Insight. Not only is it fast — it also offers many insightful ways to see how information flows through your company. Let's take a look.

With Communication Tracker, users can search for documents and see how they are connected to specific people within the organization. Users can click on a recipient to track communications, or click on the number to display the documents featured between the recipients.

Through a single dashboard, users can see the progress of the project review as well as the number of documents assigned, unassigned and completed.

A chart's functionality not only allows users to visually account for the documents by author, but also provides a variety of chart options, from 3D bar and pie graphs to splines and waterfalls.

Users can review reports to better understand the status of the documents collected within different search parameters. They can review reports by custodian, productivity and other conditions.

Speaking My Language

While visual analytics is a big part of what sets Catalyst Insight apart from its competitors. Its multilingual review capabilities should not be overlooked. Insight is able to search data in over 270 languages — and change the interface language with one click. As more companies become global enterprises, the ability to search for, collect and review data isn't only relevant to the English language. Making it easy to search for information in another language is one thing. Being able to transform the user interface, so that users can engage with the platform in a native language, is brilliant.

A Clear Picture of eDiscovery

Catalyst Insight serves to speed up search and refine methods for "Smart" coding — but most importantly, it helps to make document review visually relevant. It's not secret that 65 percent of us are visual learners. And when you undertake a process as daunting as eDiscovery, seeing is believing.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com