Search specialists could give firms an edge

Search skills will be key to firms' future efficiency and productivity, according to consultancy Deloitte

Search is set to overtake email as the most-used application in business, according to a new report released by consultancy Deloitte.

Delloite’s Eye to the Future report predicts changes in media, telecoms and other technology by 2010, and suggests the quality of firms' search capabilities will have a big affect on the efficiency of staff and overall productivity.

"You can't exploit the value of the information [held in] your enterprise if you can't find it," said Deloitte partner David Tansley. "You need the right information at the right time presented in the right way to the right people, [but] the way [text-based] search is done at the moment is very crude with hopelessly inadequate returns."

Firms will need more intuitive and more reliable search tools, because they need to be able to trust the results completely, and know when to stop looking, Tansley added.

Tansley agreed with John Lervik, chief executive of search specialist Fast, who predicted that the increasing importance of search will encourage organisations to create a new role of search engine manager. "This [person] will optimise the way the search engine is configured to [ensure] that the right information shows up when employees ask for it, in a world that is not static," Tansley said. "Most organisations don't have that today but having a search engine manager managing the platform will be key."