29.01.2019 | News How companies optimize their intranet

Intranet portals are becoming the most important platform for the digital workplace in more and more companies. Via the intranet, employees exchange information with each other and inform themselves about news in the company. When searching for information, however, they often have to make great sacrifices. The content management and collaboration systems on which the intranet portals are based usually have only rudimentary search functions. Efficient finding is therefore not possible.

The integration of a dedicated solution for enterprise search can provide a remedy. It can replace the existing search function in the intranet and equip the search with new, more comprehensive functionalities. IntraFind explains how companies benefit from this.

1.) Use linguistic methods. The comprehensive linguistic features of an enterprise search solution ensure that users can access the documents they need unerringly.

2.) Process natural language. If the Enterprise Search solution masters Natural Language Processing (NLP), employees can submit natural language search queries in the intranet. Complete questions such as "Which presentations of sales meetings from the year 2018 are there?" enable them to find the desired information much faster and more intuitively than with a conventional keyword search.

3.) Learning from experience. With the help of machine learning procedures, Enterprise Search can align the hit lists according to how often a particular document was displayed and retrieved by all employees or colleagues from its own department. In addition, employees can proactively inform themselves which search results their colleagues clicked on particularly frequently.

4.) Prioritize data sources individually. If the enterprise search solution supports the setup of search profiles, the hit lists can be further personalized. Certain document types or data sources, which are prioritized higher for certain user groups than others, move up the hit list for the members of these groups.

5.) Connect additional data sources. A suitable enterprise search solution can connect a wide variety of data sources. They range from cloud-based file sharing services to e-mail and collaboration systems to ticket systems. This enables employees to search not only the sources available on the intranet, but also the entire company inventory.

"The success of an intranet optimization depends not only on the technical improvements but also on the easy integration of the new search", says Franz Kögl, CEO of IntraFind Software AG. "No complex IT project must be necessary to make intelligent state-of-the-art search mechanisms, which colleagues already know from the numerous web applications, also available in the intranet.

In addition, it is advantageous if the search provides a broad set of standard connectors for easy connection to a wide variety of data sources. An efficient rights management system is also indispensable. Only with this can companies ensure that users only see data in their hit lists that is intended for their eyes.

"By integrating a professional enterprise search into their intranet portal, companies not only significantly increase the usability of their intranet search," says Kögl. "They are also expanding their intranet into a central knowledge portal and a point of knowledge.

For example, manufacturing companies could increase their ability to provide information to the outside world, thereby improving their service and increasing customer satisfaction. Companies that purchase a lot of technical literature for their research and development would have the opportunity to offer it centrally to their employees. This would give developers faster access to existing knowledge. In addition, plants would not be purchased unnecessarily several times just because the employees could not find them.

"In addition to finding documents and content in a smart way, the people in charge should also have people search and expert identification on their agenda," adds Kögl. "They are often more frequent or at least equally important use cases on the intranet.