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Effective URL: https://www.glean.com/blog/enterprise-search-is-hard-why-its-so-behind-and-what-itll-take-to-catch-up
Submission: On January 31 via api from US — Scanned from DE
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Product Features Knowledge Management Work Hub Connectors Security Solutions Engineering Sales Support People Knowledge Management BlogPricingAbout us Product Features Knowledge Management Work Hub Connectors Security Solutions All teamsEngineeringSalesSupportPeopleKnowledge Management BlogPricingAbout us Sign inSign in Get a demo ENTERPRISE SEARCH IS HARD: WHY IT’S SO BEHIND—AND WHAT IT’LL TAKE TO CATCH UP Eddie Zhou Engineering Mrinal Mohit Engineering All too often, we take search for granted. Google works amazingly well—so much so that it’s painfully obvious where enterprise search software has fallen behind. Trying to find something in our day-to-day work just isn’t as seamless as trying to find something on the Internet. Why is that? Simply put, enterprise search is hard. Each company’s content is unique to that organization, unlike the shared web that billions of people search daily. Within a company, employees are usually looking for specific, unrepeated information, rather than the millions of pages on the web which might answer the same question. And all this content is usually comprehensible only by those working at the company, making it hard to learn from usage patterns and feedback. Given the complexity, enterprise search software has been years behind web search for far too long. Here’s what it’ll take to catch enterprise search software up to the current needs of companies today. GET THE BASICS RIGHT There’s a lot of functionality you’d expect the search feature in popular SaaS (Software as a Service) tools to have, but most of the time, their native search simply doesn’t work. That’s because they often miss out on some of the basics. Enterprise search software should search across all of your content, not just document titles. It should come with knowledge of standard acronyms and synonyms, automatically including results that mention “Chief Executive Officer'' when you search for “CEO,” and results that mention “holiday calendar” when you search for “vacation calendar.” It should also understand that different parts of your search query are intended for different purposes; when you search for “board meeting slides,'' it should know to surface the slides not just because of what they contain, but what they are. Ranking algorithms should constantly learn from feedback. If you click on a search result low down the list, it should understand that the result probably should’ve been ranked higher, while being careful not to overfit to this one data point (unlike with Google search, feedback signals here are much sparser and less reliable). In the not infrequent moments when you slip up, it should recognize and correct your typos, based on the language of your company. All of this should exist in one unified interface across all apps, with no manual tuning required, ready to go from Day 1. UNDERSTAND YOUR COMPANY’S LANGUAGE Typing in keywords and hoping for a match has been the dominant paradigm for search. But often, that’s not enough. Sometimes you might remember what a document talked about, but not how it was worded. Enterprise search software should come with built-in semantic search, so you can look for information the way you remembered it—even if you replace “what’s the wifi password” with “where are the internet settings.” Of course, how you communicate within your company could differ very wildly from other companies. Depending on if you build software or grow fruit, “apple” could refer to a few different concepts. An effective enterprise search system needs custom deep learning models to help it understand your company’s specific language. These models not only drive semantic search, but also learn what words you and your colleagues use as synonyms—whether it's that project that got renamed, or the clever acronym you created for it. The amount of data in a company is usually many orders of magnitude smaller than the web or public datasources, so robust domain adaptation on such low volume requires careful, nuanced application of transfer learning. UNDERSTAND HOW YOUR COMPANY WORKS Your company is unique. Different teams work on different documents, talk about varied projects, and use an assortment of software in their own idiosyncratic ways. None of that is shared by other companies, yet understanding all of that is critical to a search experience that just works. Constantly building a knowledge graph of all the buzzing activity within your company enables search to surface the most important, relevant and fresh content, for every query. Graph learning techniques also enable an understanding of how all documents, people, and concepts within the company relate to each other. Aggregated data from various sources should provide a 360-degree view of all your employees—who they are, what they work on, who they work closely with, and what they’ve been up to. A similar view for customers should help teams track leads and opportunities in one unified interface. UNDERSTAND HOW YOU WORK What you need to know to get work done is very different from what other people in the company might need. A search for, say, “quarterly goals'' should take into account if you’re a software engineer or a sales account executive, instead of just showing the same results to everyone. Every search should be deeply personalized, and the ranking algorithms should leverage an understanding of the documents you work on, the tools you use, the projects you talk about, and the region you work from. The knowledge graph must inform the search system which of your coworkers’ content you care about the most, and use that to make sure every search is tailored specifically for you. This understanding of each user should be further used in the autocomplete feature when suggesting queries and documents to quickly get you what you need. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Building a great search experience for the enterprise requires solving previously unsurmounted challenges. It requires deeply understanding how you work, and what information matters to you. At Glean, we tackle these problems every day. And we’re excited to give teams the work assistant that catches enterprise search up to where it should be. Get a Demo Published January 10, 2023 Last updated October 11, 2022 Published October 5, 2021 . Last updated October 11, 2022 . Read more from the Glean team DOWNLOAD THE Fill out the details below to get the full report delivered to your inbox. By completing and submitting the form below, you will receive information and promotions from Glean. First name* Last name* Company* Job title* Work email* Phone number* By clicking “Submit,” I acknowledge receipt of the Glean Privacy Policy. Please check your inbox for the report. Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form. Read more from the Glean team RELATED ARTICLES MEET GLEAN. THE WORK ASSISTANT WITH INTUITION. Glean brings you exactly the information you need, right when you need it. Making it easier for you and your team to get big things done. Arvind Jain CEO ORGANIZING YOUR TEAM’S KNOWLEDGE WITH COLLECTIONS Nearly seven months after launch, search remains at the core of Glean. But there’s still an opportunity for curated collections of information. Arvind Jain CEO WHY GLEAN’S ANNOUNCEMENTS ARE THE BEST WAY TO DO INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS It can be hard for everyone to stay abreast of important announcements. Here's how Glean can help your company. Blair Hanley Frank Marketing GLEAN PARTNERS WITH GOOGLE CLOUD TO DELIVER AND SCALE LEADING ENTERPRISE SEARCH Glean is officially partnering with Google Cloud to deliver and scale the leading enterprise search solution for the new era of digital work. Glean WHY I JOINED GLEAN – ENTERPRISE SEARCH, SOLVED Glean is solving the most critical problem of today’s digital workplaces. Discover why I chose to join Glean, and how it’s uniquely poised to revolutionize enterprise knowledge management and discovery. THE 2023 ONBOARDING SURVEY REPORT Employees are shifting jobs more often than ever, and the volume of information and tools we use has ballooned – but onboarding hasn't kept up to accommodate. Discover in this new report how onboarding processes need to change to enable workers to thrive in the modern workplace. Glean FIND WHAT YOU NEED—INSTANTLY. Get a demo Product Features Knowledge Management Work Hub Connectors Security Solutions All teams Engineering Sales Support People Knowledge Management Resources Blog Help Pricing Plans Company About us Careers Press © 2022, Glean Technologies, Inc. PrivacySupport AgreementTerms Eddie Zhou Engineering As part of the Applied Brain team at Google, Eddie was lucky enough to work on large-scale models powering a broad range of products, from Web Search ranking to Assistant NLU to YouTube and Ads recsys. In his spare time, he enjoys playing basketball, watching his cat do weird stuff, and cracking open cold ones in the California sunshine. Mrinal Mohit Engineering Mrinal built voice assistants and NLP libraries at Facebook before hopping over to Glean to work on search quality. When not waiting for his ML models to train, he likes reading world history, traveling off the beaten track, and bringing home photographs to frame. He’s tried living off mangoes, momos and mochi, and is still alive. Related Articles Arvind Jain CEO Meet Glean. The work assistant with intuition. Arvind Jain CEO Organizing your team’s knowledge with Collections Blair Hanley Frank Marketing Why Glean’s announcements are the best way to do internal communications