I think that any company contemplating an investment in enterprise search technologies would be suprised to hear that the majority of search initiatives fail. If this is the first time you've heard this, i wouldn't be suprised. Search vendors would be the last to publicize this.
In the next few posts, I'll explain why this is the case. But first, some data to substantiate the claim above. Take a look at the following graph produced by a study from Gilbane Group published last year. 200 companies participated in the study. The question posed by Gilbane was what do you think of the Enterprise Search solutions deployed in your company today?
The response was disappointing by any measure. 25% of the respondents wanted search to be completely redone. 30% indicated they often have trouble finding information. Only 3% responded that they loved the search technology. I think you would agree that you would not want to be sitting in front of your boss arguing how successful your search inititative was, with these kind of numbers!
We'll flesh this out in the next few posts.