AMR Research and Mercer discuss the ROI of Content Management Systems (hint: they need search)

In large enterprises today, employees and administrators are trying to make sense of the volumes of content created by and living inside their companies, and quite a few of these organizations are turning to enterprise content management (ECM) systems. According to Forrester Research, ECM license revenue was projected to reach $3.9B in 2008.

Yet, over the past few years, as companies have spent significant dollars on their ECM systems, they've come to realize one thing. Content management systems are great at being repositories of information, yet individual employees still struggle to find the exact document they are looking for – even if they know it's in the ECM system. In other words, finding information can be a painful process.

Which leads us to the latest thinking from AMR Research, which provides comprehensive research and advisory services for supply chain and IT executives. Jim Murphy, Research Director for Knowledge Management at AMR Research, is looking at effective search as the missing element of a content management solution. While many content management systems have a built-in search feature, the capability and relevance of this functionality is typically not up to par. Murphy has been talking to many enterprises who are increasingly looking to separate enterprise search solutions to provide high quality search across not only their ECM system, but across other major repositories in their companies as well.

One such enterprise Murphy has spoken to is Mercer. As a global services company in 180 cities and 40 countries, Mercer has 19,000 employees, many of whom need to access information instantly to effectively serve their clients. Their business depends on leveraging intellectual capital and sharing best practices. So even though their intranet linked to Livelink, an ECM system which stored 1.5 million documents, there was no comprehensive search tool spanning all of the companies. After evaluating many different search technologies, Mercer made the choice to bring in the Google Search Appliance to provide universal search across their intranet.

As Haroon Suleman, Mercer's Lead Enterprise Architect for enterprise search, explains, "The Google Search Appliance won hands down. The fact that the Google Search Appliance provided a bridge to Livelink, and can provide future SharePoint connectivity if needed, was a major selling point."

Both Murphy and Suleman will join us on Thursday, October 8 for a webinar titled "Search: A Vital Element of an ECM Strategy." Murphy will present AMR's views on the ECM and enterprise search space, and Suleman will share the Mercer story, discussing Mercer's business needs, needs behind enterprise search, and specific metrics from users on how the Google Search Appliance has been increasing productivity. Register for the webinar and join the conversation – and the question and answer session at the end of the session.

Search: A Vital Element of an ECM Strategy

Thursday, October 8, 2009

11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT

Maybe ECM systems need good search too, after all.

Posted by Vijay Koduri, Google Search Appliance team