Thanks to Stephen Arnold at Beyond Search for leading me to this article about BI.
We all wish that search worked the way we think it should. Our expectations aren’t high. I go to the LFPL OPAC and search for an author and seemingly retrieve anything with any of those words or none of those words returned in what to my mind is a random results list. I mean really is it that hard to retrieve a list of materials held by the library with author Tuchman? I wouldn’t think so, I’m just glad my searching has improved with the new OPAC system, when I first moved to Louisville I just roamed the shelves of the very tiny branch that I still frequent. Good thing I learned the Dewey Decimal system way back when.
Anyway, back to BI. Rarely are users searching for searching sake. Ultimately, they are seeking specific answers. Answers to the question of who, what, when, how, why and should. So the fact that enterprise systems are working to improve the ability to answer questions when users perform a search give me hope.
I truly like the results I get when I use Silobreaker.com. Searching news is one of the most powerful tools in BI, CI and research in general. Having a system that gives you news in context makes a researcher sing Opera ala Bugs Bunny.
When organizations invest in a system that takes their internal data, in whatever format it may exist, blend that with data from other structured sources and deliver contextual results business will not be done as usual, it will be done on a level far above the usual.
There are some companies out there making this happen. Unfortunately, there are many factors beyond technology that challenge the functionality for this ideal application. Security, user roles, and data limitations are just a few of the considerations to be accounted for when choosing your own information solution. If you want to stay on top of the technical developments, I highly recommend adding Beyond Search to your feedreader.
In the meantime, take stock of what your business intelligence goals and challenges are and investigate the available solutions so that you can get as close to one query for the who, what, when, how, why and should answers as possible.
