AIIM will soon release a new study on Findability that shows 49 percent of survey respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that it is a difficult and time consuming process to find the information they need to do their job. The new survey of over 500 businesses conducted in May 2008, suspects that a prime culprit for the failings of Findability in the enterprise is the admission that 69 percent of respondents believe that only 50 percent or less of their organization’s information is searchable online. Given the ready access that users are supposed to have in this “Age of Google” – how is this possible?
“Findability has been a common source of frustration in the enterprise for decades,” states AIIM Vice President Carl Frappaolo. “As information has become more and more digital, from it’s creation through to management, the pain of finding enterprise information has moved from the piles of paper on the desktop and in storage cabinets, to the digital landfill of file servers, e-mail inboxes, digital desktops, and content management systems. Despite the advances made in search on the internet, enterprise search leaves most users frustrated.”
Finding content digitally is only possible if pointers to content or the content itself is in native digital format, made available for indexing by search, and/or accessible by information organization and access techniques (such as navigational structures, taxonomies, bookmarks, etc.). The lack of such functionality in the enterprise is at the heart of user frustration.
But fault does not lie with technology solution providers. Most organizations have failed to take a strategic approach to enterprise search. 49% of respondents have “No Formal Goal” for enterprise Findability within their organizations, and a large subset of the overall research population state that when it comes to the “Criticality of Findability to their Organization’s Business Goals and Success”, 38% have no idea (“Don’t Know”) what the importance of Findability is in comparison to a mere 10% who claim Findability is “Imperative” to their organization.
The lack of strategic understanding, implemented plans and technological pros and cons to address Findability in the enterprise continues to cause pain in most organizations, although slow progress is being made.
AIIM is hosting a Special Webinar on Thursday, June 26th at 2:00 PM EDST for organizations interested in the major findings. To register for the free webinar, presented by the report authors, go to http://www.aiim.org/Events/register.aspx?id=179.
The companion research paper, the AIIM Market IQ on Findability, will be published in July 2008, and is anticipated to be over 70 pages long, with over 50 charts/figures.
