These seven benchmarking statistics are drawn from a recent research titled "Search and Discovery: Exploiting Knowledge, Minimizing Risk." We surveyed 415 information professionals from organizations of all sizes. Larger organizations over 5,000 employees represent 30%, and mid-sized organizations of 500 to 5,000 employees 35%. Small-to-mid sized organizations with 10 to 500 employees constitute 35%. 67% of the participants are from North America, and 18% from Europe.
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25% have no advanced or dedicated search tools. 13% have five or more.
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Those with advanced search tools are most likely (45%) to acquire them through their ECM product or provider. 42% of users have on-server search products outside of ECM, including 14% using Open Source. 21% are using a dedicated search appliance, and 8% SaaS.
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38% have not tuned or optimized their search tool at all, including 8% who have not even switched it on. Half of responding organizations allocate less than half an FTE to support search applications. Only 12% have used external expertise.
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Beyond SharePoint, intranet, and ECM systems, most content is beyond the scope of the search tools. Only 19% have advanced search across email, with less than 10% extending to other enterprise systems.
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47% feel that universal search and compliant e-discovery is becoming near impossible given the proliferation of cloud share and collaboration apps, personal note systems, and mobile devices. 60% are firm of the view that automated analytics tools are the only way to improve classification and tagging to make their content more findable.
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Better decision-making and faster customer service are given as the top benefits from improved search tools. Only 14% were required to make a financial business case for search investment.
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42% consider that they have achieved payback from their investment in search tools within 12 months or less. 62% achieved payback within 18 months.
