Information retrieval: a costly problem

Let’s crunch some numbers. The average employee wastes 3.6 hours per day searching for information. That’s 18 hours per week, or around 900 hours per year.

At an enterprise company with hundreds or thousands of employees, that number reaches staggering levels. For example, a 500-person company wastes over 450,000 hours annually, and a 2,000-person company loses around 1.8 million productive hours. Every year. 

This lost time affects more than just productivity – it also impacts employee morale. 42% of workers surveyed said their confidence was undermined when they couldn’t find the right resources. Lower confidence yields lower engagement – and the cost of disengaged employees is higher than you think.

Enterprise search: a powerful solution

How can you take back these productive hours and prevent revenue loss? Invest in AI-driven search engine software. This software, also called enterprise search, solves knowledge discovery for your whole organization. 

This article serves as an overview of our three-part guide on enterprise search. Its purpose is to inform you and lead you to an enterprise search tool that works for your company. 

Below, we’ll recap the three main topics covered in that guide:

1. What is search as a service for enterprise companies?
2. What are the strategic benefits of AI-powered enterprise search?
3. How can you select the best enterprise search software?

Part 1: Enterprise search 101

Enterprise search is an internal, AI-driven search engine. It connects to all company data sources and surfaces results based on user queries. 

Here’s a rough sketch of how it works: the search engine creates a data index based on connected company information – think intranets, drives, and data repositories. Vector search then combs that index for contextually relevant results. This works faster than federated search, which runs independent searches on various data sources and combines the results. 

For a more detailed dive into technical definitions and use cases, read this article on how enterprise search as a service works. 

Part 2: Benefits of AI-powered search 

Artificial intelligence (AI) enhances internal search capabilities in numerous ways. For instance, AI enables relevant, conversational search. 

Unlike keyword-based searches, which only find resources that clearly contain the keyword, AI search engines return results based on semantic relevance. With AI capabilities powered by natural language processing and vector search, enterprise search can analyze query intent and retrieve relevant insights compiled from multiple data sources.

This is especially useful for people who don’t know where to start looking. So if a person searches “how can I sell our product to an engineering leader?”, they’ll get fine-tuned results for marketing one-pagers, case studies for that persona, email sequence templates, and more.

Here’s a list of other advantages. Get a full explanation of each in this article on the strategic benefits of AI-powered enterprise search.

⏱️ Put time & productivity toward better work – not busy-work 

🗃️ Access information from all your integrated sources 

🔐 Lock down data with powerful privacy & security 

📈 Ensure your growing business stays competitive at scale 

🔮 Gain insights and analytics to inform company decisions 

🦾 Improve users’ experience (and their output)

Part 3: Finding your enterprise search solution

If you’re ready to invest in an AI-driven search engine, you should read our article on selecting the best enterprise search software. It covers key features and considerations, which we’ll outline briefly below. 

These features distinguish the good from the great in internal search software: 

• An index that updates in real time to keep search results relevant
• A high number of data integrations with company-wide and private connectors 
• A generative AI chatbot with a conversational search experience
• Enhanced control and security measures, like BYO cloud and large language model
• Reliable performance for enterprise with 99.9% uptime SLA
• Competitive pricing with a positive ROI
• A user-friendly interface, including an intelligent tab experience where you can launch searches from a new browser and view company announcements, upcoming meetings, and personalized recent content 
• Insightful analytics based on your search data

As AI continues to develop, other features like visual search, voice search, and multilingual search will become more feasible. Look for an agile, innovative enterprise search solution that’s always finding ways to integrate new technologies. 

GoSearch: An AI-driven search engine with the features you need

In the market of AI-driven search engines, GoSearch is a stand-out solution. Your IT team can trust its top-notch security standards, and your employees will love its frictionless UX. 

GoSearch delivers all the features of top-grade enterprise search in one SaaS product. This means you get access to the benefits of AI-powered search with no heavy lifting, and you can count on our team of experts to innovate at startup pace.

The math is simple. Instead of wasting thousands of hours, give your employees the tool they need to find resources quickly, effectively, and painlessly. They’ll thank you for it – and so will your bottom line. 

Book a demo to find out how GoSearch can power knowledge retrieval across your organization.