The increasing digitalization of all areas of daily life and economy has been bringing many advantages to companies. Data collection has become much easier. And the available data empowers companies to manage their resources more efficiently, perform knowledge management and deliver better customer service. In theory, at least.
In practice, surveys and research show a different picture for years: many employees lose an average of several hours a week searching for the information they need to perform their tasks. For many companies, is therefore still not a matter of course to provide good service: For example, handling a customer service case quickly and satisfactorily, or recommending a suitable product to the customer. The high proportion of negative reviews on customer portals also suggests that the service provided by some companies is not as good as it should be.
Massive increase in data is one reason why digital transformation in companies stalls
One important reason for this development is the huge increase in data worldwide. Many companies struggle to keep track of it all: Data pools in different solutions have been growing significantly over the years. Much of this data is stored in on-premises or cloud solutions. For example, many customer data is stored in CRM systems, while R&D data can be found in Jira solutions. Financial data is stored in ERP systems, and data about the company's own employees is in HR solutions such as SAP SuccessFactors or Workday.
This is where the real problem seems to emerge: Large data inventories, which are stored in many isolated applications, make an efficient manual search virtually impossible. This not only leads to employees wasting a lot of time, but also threatens the long-term success of digital transformation.
However, for companies to fulfill their obligations to their customers, every employee must have access to the data they need. The increasingly complex day-to-day business in many companies, which is increasingly characterized by mobile working and home offices, underscores the urgency of this task.
Enterprise Search Software Provides a Solution
To meet the challenges of a constant increase in data, a robust enterprise search solution is required. This should be able to find both structured and unstructured data in different sources and bring them together centrally. Furthermore, with the help of artificial intelligence, which has become an integral part of modern enterprise search solutions, it is possible to search structured and unstructured data smartly. Data stored in cloud solutions or SaaS applications can be searched, as well as data stored on-premises on file shares or on the intranet. High-quality enterprise search applications are capable of recognizing hundreds of data formats, further improving search effectiveness. Furthermore, user permissions that are automatically transferred from the source system and, in addition, user profiles that can be individually defined, ensure data security and protection.
Further advantages of modern enterprise search solutions
Another characteristic of modern enterprise search software is that it can be easily customized to business needs. As a result, employees working with this solution can deliver personalized and at the same time efficient customer service. By accelerating customer support, ROI times of less than twelve months can be easily achieved.
In this way, good enterprise search software becomes an important driver of digital transformation in the company: With the right data at the right time, smarter decisions can be made. This ensures more growth in the organization in the long term. Connectors link the enterprise search solution to the relevant company applications (for example, an ERP or CRM system) as well as to other data sources inside and outside the company. Intuitive user interfaces enable employees to quickly find the relevant data and perform their tasks satisfactorily. Thus, the company is well equipped to deal with the growing data volume and the associated challenges of digital transformation. Our iFinder solution meets these requirements, and brings with it all the aforementioned features that users expect of a modern enterprise search software. This makes it well suited for organizations that want to optimize their processes and gain the upper hand in the flood of data.
