Pal argued that companies have unrealistic expectations of what technology can achieve. Pal said organisations should look first at basic organisational issues, which can be implemented to improve their knowledge management. Only then should organisations consider particular search technology, he suggested. Lotus, and to a lesser extent Microsoft, are attempting to lead in document management. But if the product is implemented within Domino and Exchange, companies may not get the full benefit as users will view it as just another feature that they will never use,' he said.
Cognitive relevance looks at syntax patterns to gain a degree of contextual understanding.
Categorisation, championed by market leader Autonomy, uses tags based on user key word searches. Enterprises should first consider the way they organise data before considering an investment in expensive search solutions. In the future, advanced search technology may be incorporated into Lotus Domino or Microsoft Outlook, where they risk being lost among the options.