Being the hosts of “the Search and Findability blog”, we believe it is time to define and explain what Findwise means by these terms and how they relate.
“Findability” is not a new term or concept. As stated on Wikipedia, Peter Morville is often credited for having introduced the term and it is used in different areas related to the quality of being locatable or navigable either in terms of finding information in the digital world or geographical locations.
“Search” is, at least in the world of IT, commonly associated with either Google on the web, or a search box in the corner of the company Intranet or other websites. Most people have positive experiences from searching with Google on the web but rather poor, sometimes even terrible, experiences from searching at company websites and in internal systems and applications.
Simple search box which often provides undesirable results.
The primary focus of Findwise is to improve the experience and benefits from using search technology in the corporate setting. By itself, we don’t believe that the term “Search” or even “Enterprise Search” fully reflects this focus as it limits the scope of search technology to being “just” the search box in the website corner, which often provides undesirable results. From experience, we know that modern search technology can be utilised in multiple ways to fulfil the needs of an organisation to make information accessible both to their employees and customers. The search box is only one way. Therefore, to support and explain our aims and focus in relation to search technology, we have defined the concept of “Findability by Findwise”.
Findability by Findwise expands the area of search and value of search technology by taking a holistic approach to the challenge of creating business value from internal and external information assets. Findability by Findwise is all about maximising the customer business value gained from search technology investments. Making sure that search technology is implemented and utilised to best support and strengthen the business processes and help the organisation to reach its business goals.
