Enterprise search: A state of the art

Abstract

Enterprise search is changing. The explosion of information within organizations, technological advances and availability of free OpenSource machine learning libraries offer many possibilities. Eighteen informants from practice, academia, search technology vendors and large organizations (Oil and Gas, Governments, Pharmaceuticals, Aerospace and Retail) were interviewed to assess challenges and future directions. The findings confirmed the existence of the ‘Google Habitus’, technology propaganda and a need to transcend disciplines for a Systems thinking approach toward enterprise search. This encompasses information management, user search literacy, governance, learning feedback loops as well as technology. A novel four-level model for enterprise search use cases is presented, covering search as a utility, search as an answer machine, search task apps and a discovery engine. This could be used to reframe enterprise search perceptions, expanding possibilities and improving business outcomes.