When choosing a search solution, there are several important considerations to make. The type of content you need to surface and how that content is indexed needs to be taken into account, as well as the volume of documents expected and other search-specific details.

A business search solution can streamline your company’s workflows by making critical information more readily accessible. Having a reliable search system will enable your employees to find the data they need faster and with less effort than before. It can also lead to more accurate records, improved efficiency, and fewer duplicated efforts because members of your team will be able generate results faster than before.

To help you select the right enterprise search solution for your business and its particular needs, we’ve outlined some essential features you should consider before making a final decision on which software to purchase.

1. Full-Text Search

Full-text search can be important for organizations that want to make their data easily accessible to a wide range of users.

Full-text search works by searching through the entire content of a document rather than just the metadata associated with that document, so it’s a great option for organizations that have a wide range of content types.

2. AutoSuggest

AutoSuggest functionality is an excellent feature to have in an enterprise search solution. This allows users to quickly narrow their search terms, helping to ensure that their results are as accurate as possible.

AutoSuggest functionality can be especially helpful for companies where employees are searching for data that is outside of their own areas of expertise. For example, a marketing employee might be looking for data from the engineering team. With auto-suggest, the engineering data would be quickly accessible as the marketing employee types in the first few letters of the engineering data.

AutoSuggest is also helpful for organizations where employees are likely to use truncated search terms. For example, when an employee is searching for data that includes an abbreviation, auto-suggest can quickly offer the full term so that the employee doesn’t have to remember it or type it out completely.

3. Batching and Filtering

Batching and filtering are both features that can help businesses make their search processes more efficient.

Batching allows users to group similar search results together so that they can be viewed at once. Filtering allows individual groups within a search result group to be selected and removed so that only the desired data remains.

Batching and filtering can be helpful when you need to narrow your results but you don’t know the exact terms to search for. For example, if you know that a certain person corresponded with a supplier but don’t remember the name of the company, you can use the filtering feature to select emails from that supplier and then remove the emails that don’t contain the name you’re looking for.

4. Accuracy and Relevance

Search solutions exist to make your data accessible and more easily found, but occasionally, the data you’re looking for doesn’t actually exist or is not available in the format you’re searching for.

If a document was deleted many years ago, for example, it might not be included in the search results even if your business has a robust search system in place.

Summing It Up

At the end of the day, the most important thing to do when selecting a business search solution is to make sure that the solution meets your organization’s unique needs. With the right software in place, you can make your data more accessible and easier to find, which can help improve efficiency, accuracy, and more.