On top of more creative tasks, everyday work also involves routine tasks that cost time and money as well as valuable manpower. Employees frequently spend a great deal of time on simple tasks like searching for the information they need.
To operate successfully in an international environment, employees need to be able to access relevant information at any time, in the right context, at the touch of a button – without having to do time-consuming research to find it.
Task
Retailers use a variety of different specialized applications: SharePoint as a company-wide internal knowledge database (intranet), an image database for product photos (Adam), a file sharing program for data storage, job portals for company-wide job advertisements, or a glossary.
Mindbreeze InSpire was used as an integration in SharePoint to facilitate a more efficient way of working without burdening the staff with an additional application. This provides the employees with access to all information directly – without having to comb through the respective data source.
Solution
Following the proof of concept, the company chose Mindbreeze InSpire as their intelligent search tool for all the data managed in SharePoint. With enterprise-wide access to information, employees have a comprehensive overview of all the data relevant to their daily work, including manuals and instructions.
The hit results can be grouped and the related items can be displayed. On top of that, creating specific user interfaces enables a notification function that keeps users up to date on specific topics.
Implementation
An extensive evaluation phase was conducted, during which a number of search solutions currently available on the market were assessed, and after a successful test phase, Mindbreeze InSpire was implemented. The existing search solution was then replaced by Mindbreeze, resulting in a dramatically optimized search experience.
Due to the sheer amount of data already managed in the cloud (SharePoint Online), the company decided to deploy Mindbreeze InSpire as a SaaS solution and run the Mindbreeze appliance in an external data center. Working together with the internal IT department, all relevant data sources were quickly connected to Mindbreeze InSpire using the appropriate standard connectors.
Target Achievement
Even though the short-term objective of implementing Mindbreeze InSpire was to replace an existing search solution, this move also delivered a host of added improvements. With Mindbreeze InSpire as their insight engine, employees can now efficiently search the corporate knowledge database across departments.
By integrating the search into SharePoint and linking it to other data sources, staff can now search through all data sources and quickly find the information they need without switching applications. The results are restricted using filters and facets on the basis of different criteria, providing users with an even more efficient search. The integration into SharePoint as a search field is comparable to the familiar Internet search engines, which meant that no training was needed.
Facts
- 100,000 users
- More than 150 different data sources
- Nearly one million different documents
- Some 60,000 search queries per day
- One million search queries per month