Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Our industry helps people retrieve information by searching, browsing, and visualizing the data stored within their content management systems. This endeavor is inherently introspective in so far as it focuses on the close analysis of an enterprise’s internal content. This talk is an exercise in thinking outside of that box. Clarke explores ways in which an enterprise’s internal content can be mined for information, even when the answers don’t always exist within the data we are querying. He discusses the use of natural language processing and semantic query expansion techniques, demonstrating the power of ontologies and machine reasoning to interrogate internal content in new and powerful ways.

For EY, part of its enterprise search program is a robust voice of the customer program. Ed Dale gives a holistic view of how EY did this, from establishing the business case for the program all the way through to implementation. He shares actual experiences with staffing and growing a successful program and show a demo. He offers key insights, proven techniques, and lessons learned. Separately, Matt Riley brings us up to date with new developments with Swiftype’s search engine.

During the last 4 years, Merck has evolved in its search philosophy and technology. Moving from a poorly received enterprise search experience, it now relies on analytics and key technologies to drive decision making. Stressing authoritative content and quality over sheer volume, Merck is also looking at future improvements as it shifts key pieces to the cloud. Sebastian Klatt also sees the evolution of search in terms of relevance and explains how relevancy is determined, what relevancy alternatives exist, and how to tune relevancy.

Enterprise search is not restricted to internal operations; it's imperative to have robust search for ecommerce and in-store experiences. If customers can't find what they want to buy quickly and painlessly, they will move on to a competitor's site or give up entirely. Hear some hints on how to maximize search in the retail environment, including visual search and a Verizon "search by example" use case. Benjamin Klatt presents Raytion’s shorter path to success, integrating use case-driven applications, analyzing current processes, and designing an effort-reducing integration. Two inspiring presentations based on practical examples!