This is absolutely brilliant. This is what makes my (pseudo) job worth it.
I just opened an email from Beth Mayhew, Director of Marketing for AIMM.org that says this:
[Dan's Note: Quote below of the entirety of our press release, minus the links. I thought blogging was about providing links to what you're commenting on, so users can form their own judgement. Or is this mere ivory tower mudslinging?]
"Enterprise Search Frustrates and Disappoints Users
69% of respondents report that less than half of enterprise information is searchable online
Silver
Spring, MD – June 17, 2008 – In a new study on Findability to be
released by AIIM, 49% 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% of
respondents believe that only 50% 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."
[Dan's Note: Steve's comments follow]
Several Points:
- Duh. You can't find diddly in an enterprise or out.
When does 2 zillion responses to search end up being helpful? It's
ridiculous how much internal corporate knowledge is totally wasted
because your own people can't find what they need.
- "Findability"?
- Not one to nitpick but "from it's creation" should be "its creation".
- Perhaps best of all – try to find out in this press release
what AIIM stands for! The irony is superb. Better yet, go to AIIM.org –
it still isn't obvious. When you search AIIM in their search bar, it
takes you off site to Google, who promptly displays 326,000 results,
none of which actually define AIIM as far as I can find.
So the organization assembled to deal with the issues
associated with finding information does a survey that tells us that
users are not happy when they can't find information, but uses Google
to not find information that its members (or me) might like to find. I
almost don't want to ask, but where do they keep these survey results?
Have you seen 'em? Nope, have you?
You can't just make this stuff up. It would have been much
better if they slipped in something like "48% of all data is entirely
fabricated, but 98% of the time we can't prove it because no one knows
where any of the information is".
So if this little brilliantly perfect example doesn't get you
to realize that without an entirely different data-centric approach to
categorizing and classifying data – ideally at creation – you are
completely and utterly hosed, nothing will. E-discovery my butt.
