Is Enterprise Search on your Radar?

I ran across an interesting issue on a recent assignment. A mid-sized printer wanted to centralize all files and make them searchable. The goal was to make all documents quickly and easily accessible regardless of which tool was used internally (job tickets, emails, etc.) or externally (receipts for outside purchases).

They had IT people working on this for a year but not with much success. What brought this to my attention was when looking for bottlenecks I discovered that the CSRs had to go into and out of this Enterprise Search software application several times each job ticket to save emails, outside purchases and changes to the job ticket. And each time they logged into the software and performed a task (convert the file into a PDF) caused them to lose two minutes. I calculated that this was costing the company enough for a FTE (full time employee).

The whole idea of enterprise search is very interesting. It is not that the information is not available. Usually the information is available just not in a central location, not easily accessible and not searchable. That could mean to fully analyze a job you would need the job ticket, emails stored on different computers and receipts about paper, ink, and outside purchases.

So I am starting my research into these products and I am wondering two things:

1)   is this something your company is doing?
2)   is this something that your company is considering doing?

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