Original post: http://vdr.com/blog/value-of-search/

Many companies are incorporating enterprise search into their information management strategy. This trend is of no surprise given the volume of data scattered within most businesses. One particular company we’ve worked with has multiple Oracle database tables of critical safety documentation. This information resides in silos of disconnected locations making it impossible to access in a timely manner. Since their business is predicated on quick response times, it is imperative that they have a sound solution. In this case, efficient access to critical information saves lives by lowering people’s exposure to hazardous materials. This is an extreme example yet it still rings true, as does the fact that a typical knowledge worker spends an average of 15-35% of their time searching for information only to come up empty ½ of the time.

The value of enterprise search is absolutely being realized. As a result, its use within corporations is rising rapidly. At the same time, providers of CAD, PDM, PLM, ECM, and ERP business applications are feeling market pressures to further differentiate themselves from the competition. Providing enterprise search as a much needed solution and highly valued capability is clearly a great way to do it.

The question is, how do they do it? How do application providers tackle the challenge of incorporate enterprise search as a value add? It can be a tough question to answer. Some dip their toe in, while others make large time and money investments to develop enterprise search capabilities – many of which are only able to find data that originated from their own applications. There is a different and much more effective way for enterprise software developers to provide their customers with;

• find, sort, categorize, display and access to all relevant data quickly and efficiently in any database or repository no matter where it originated
• the ability to keep all of their data where it is and avoid costly, time consuming data migrations
• the capability to search deep within the content of their data to include title block info, labels, x-refs, pmi, and more
• a single login to access multiple data locations and find previously “unsearchable” data
• virtual profile cards to understand ‘where used’ and ‘composed of’ details about parts and components
• the ability to promote design reuse within their company to greatly reduce redundant replication
• annotation, mark-up, and viewing of CAD models without needing the native CAD license
• secure data, audit trails and ITAR compliance

All of the above and more can be achieved by embedding existing and proven enterprise search capabilities into the core of a provider’s software offering. By embedding a solution like Alcove9, software providers can increase the value of their solutions to their clients and widen the gap of benefits vs. http://www.alcove9.com/the-added-value-of-enterprise-search http://www.alcove9.com/the-added-value-of-enterprise-search http://www.alcove9.com/the-added-value-of-enterprise-searchcost of ownership. Unified Information Access (UIA) also makes their app a customer’s company-wide go to search standard – no matter what the data is or where it originated from; even if it was developed in a competitive offering to that of the app provider.

What business applications do you feel could be of greater benefit to customers by having enterprise search?

Learn more about our enterprise search solution, a9 Global Search, or contact us to discuss how we can help your organization.

All of that was great, and still is, but there lies a fundamental objection.  A lot of people need access to the actual, previously created models and designs.  Why?  Even though you have embedded the “tribal knowledge” inside the template, it’s still very valuable for designers to see and interrogate the previous design.  It’s eminent for them to review the history, capture lessons learned, explore little details and features, etc.  Templates with embedded knowledge can only hold so much information, and usually it is only the rudimentary features and processes that the corporation deems necessary to be present in certain designs.

What makes matters a little more complicated is that not all designs have templates.  The process of acquiring the necessary knowledge is very tedious, expensive, and requires constant maintenance. To avoid haphazardly-made modifications, a superfluous task is created for certain people to maintain the template. Therefore, template creation becomes limited to certain popular designs that are either: (1) reused often with few parametric variations, or (2) complicated and tedious designs where using a template may reduce errors in recreating those specific parts or assembly.

“Lost data has caused days of time spent re-creating the data. Lost or difficult to find information affects production and profitability.”

Tech-Clarity, Inc. 2012

If that’s not enough, employers are always faced with the challenge of creating a discipline that will encourage their designers to use existing templates.  The challenge stems from the fact that most designers feel constrained if they are forced to follow someone else’s design approach or methods.  Consequently, employers and template creators end up limiting template contents to those elements that are common in most designs to garner more use among all designers – a practice that typically leads to even less design reuse than originally desired.

So, where does that leave us and how can we fix it?  Simply, the way to increase design reuse is to make previous designs available and quickly accessible – but that’s easier said than done.  In some instances, a corporation may have some data sitting in one data management system but the new designs are in another.  In other instances, the data is in some legacy system that was never migrated due to the high costs of migration.  Or, the company could simply have no data management system altogether and all existing and legacy data is residing on servers and network shared drives under some naming convention that the company devised.  In today’s engineering and manufacturing companies, data doesn’t exist in just one place.  Companies go through mergers and acquisitions, technology changes all the time – now more than ever, policies and processes are constantly improving, which all cause data to live in multiple places.

The greatest corporate rivalry I’ve seen is between the engineering/manufacturing department and the IT department.  Engineering and manufacturing departments accuse IT of not knowing what they’re doing, and IT disregards engineers for not knowing what they are asking of IT.  The fact of the matter is that engineers are simply trying to get their job done by requesting tools that will make them more efficient and IT is trying to make sure that the tools requested will function well with all other tools, policies, and procedures within the organization.  It’s left to the CIO to referee. I don’t envy him.  Tom Davenport, a Professor of Management and IT at Babson College in Wellesley, MA, says, “I hardly get anybody ever who wants to be a CIO, which is probably indicative of something.  And if they do want to be a CIO, it’s like:  ‘Fine, it’d be useful to rotate through this for a while on my path toward CEO.’  I think people respect technology, but there aren’t that many people anymore who want to be career CIOs.”

CIOs know all too well the adage that trying to please everyone pleases no one. Although I believe they’re habitually perceived disappointingly, that doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t doing a good job.  If the CIO is doing what he is supposed to do, then no one in any one department will receive 100% of their requests, which leaves a wake of unhappy campers eager for a scapegoat.

The role of CIO is changing in ways that are more evolutionary than revolutionary. Today, more than ever, your CIO’s hands are tied by things that keep him or her up at night and an ever-growing laundry list of “to-do”s. In addition to the conventional technical functions like security, software, hardware, and everything in between, your CIO also has superfluous responsibilities that include marketing and social media, which definitely demands their attention.

And this is just one of many “new” or untraditional CIO responsibilities.  Today’s CIOs are expected to become the change-agents of the organization.  It’s on their shoulders to implement new changes in the face of rapidly transforming mediums and technologies, which could satiate a forty-hour work week alone.

So let’s all make sure to think before answering the question, “Is your CIO doing a good job?”  Also, the next time you see your CIO in the hallway or next to the coffee machine, let him or her know how much you appreciate their efforts and perseverance.

We’ve been hearing about the paperless office for more than 20 years, yet the paper mills haven’t seen better days than these and it looks like the trend has no end in sight. But why? One of the reasons: We’ve got no trust or confidence in electronic media.

Are we really okay with cyber-filing?

When you consider the sheer volume of files and versions of documents that are created during the lifecycle of a single product – from concept to fruition – you are looking at a stack of virtual paper that is a mile high and many gigabytes wide, so why are we still printing these documents?

It’s easy to find if I’m holding it in my hand; it can be shared via fax, scan, or snail mail. I can send a physical copy to the shop floor. There is no learning curve for reading a physical document, but teaching someone to understand my CAD drawing adds an astronomical level of complexity. Paper copies can be marked up with a handy pencil. It’s cheaper than having to provide a software license for every user in a product’s lifecycle. And don’t forget power outages, battery failures, and computer crashes.

We often don’t have the confidence that we’ll be able to RE-FIND what we created before, so we make a paper copy that we can keep in our filing cabinets or desk drawers. To help mitigate this fear and to ease the paradigm shift, Alcove9 provides on-premise advanced search solutions that allow users to easily find and re-use their data regardless of its content, location, or file type. We help organizations tackle the “going paperless” issue by guaranteeing that we can help users find what they need when they need it. Explore alcove9.com for more information, or test drive a9 solutions.

It’s easy to create something simple. It is very difficult to create something complex.

By its very nature, product data resides in multiple islands and application data silos within most organizations. These enterprise systems provide support to run specific processes. However, applications (such as PLM) have a need to access data across multiple domains for different purposes, like decision support, cross domain process management, and target cost planning.

Your company needs solutions that liberate the value of your product data without liberating you of your valuable time and money, and facilitate the process of accessing and connecting data using linked data methods.

Finally: something simple in a world of complexity.

We would be overjoyed to have you for lunch and discussion on Thursday, April 26th at 11:00 AM at Automation Alley in Troy. Not local? Webinar Presentation April 26th 3PM Eastern Time