Top 20 Enterprise Search Engine Applications & Case Studies in '24

54% of information workers across the globe complain about interrupting their work to look for information, insights and answers. ¹  The enterprise search engine solves time loss by helping organizations search and retrieve information across various data sources, including websites, databases, and file systems. 

This article gathers the most common 20 use cases under three main categories: General processes, industry-specific and business function applications. 

General search engine applications 

Some common enterprise search engine applications include:

1.) Knowledge management: Search engines can help organizations manage and search through their knowledge bases, such as articles, manuals, and technical documents. Consequently, employees can quickly access relevant information and improve productivity.

2.) Customer support: Search engines can help customer support teams rapidly find solutions to common customer issues by searching through support articles, user forums, and other resources.

3.) Business intelligence: Enterprise search engines can be used to mine large datasets for insights and trends, helping organizations make data-driven decisions.

4.) User search behavior: Search engines can help understand user search patterns and information usage. This way, organizations can identify knowledge gaps and improve information sharing. 

5.) Ensuring security: Companies can deploy search engines to check all customers against lists of individuals monitored by law enforcement agencies to ensure none of their customers is a public threat.   

6.) Contacting experts: Search engines can filter by using attributes and experience to identify experts. Experts are critical as they may hold 42% of institutional knowledge. ² As a result, employees can contact experts on given tasks and save time. 

7.) Intranet search: Search engines can be useful for locating information in shared drives and databases. 

8.) Identifying suspicious activities: Search engines can connect to the system’s router, switch, and web server logs or VPN and check for suspicious behavior, such as:

• Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks 
• Suspicious locations 
• Suspicious post addresses
• Large VPN downloads. 

Industry-specific search engine applications 

Enterprise search engines can be applied to a wide range of industries, including:

9.) Healthcare: Healthcare providers can use search engines to quickly access patient records, medical literature, and other relevant information. For example, Mayo Clinic, a leading healthcare provider, deployed a search engine to help its physicians and researchers access patient data, medical literature, and other relevant information quickly and easily. ³  The search engine also enabled the clinic to mine data for insights and trends, helping them make better-informed decisions.

10.) Legal: Law firms and legal departments can use search engines to manage and search through case files, contracts, and other legal documents.

11.) Finance: Banks and financial institutions can use search engines to search through customer data, financial reports, and other financial information. For instance, Goldman Sachs implemented a search engine to help its traders and analysts search through financial data quickly and efficiently. ⁴ The search engine provided real-time search and analytics capabilities and helped the company identify trends and opportunities more easily.

12.) Information technology: IT departments can use search engines to manage and search through technical documentation, knowledge bases, and other resources.

13.) Manufacturing: Manufacturing companies can use search engines to manage and search through technical documentation, production data, and other relevant information.

14.) E-commerce: Online retailers can use search engines to help customers find products based on their search queries and other criteria, such as price, availability, and customer ratings. For example, Airbnb, an online marketplace for vacation rentals, used a search engine to help its users find and book vacation rentals more easily. ⁵  The search engine provided personalized search results and recommendations, and it helped the company identify new business opportunities based on user search behavior.

15.) Education: Educational institutions can use search engines to manage and search through research papers, textbooks, and other educational resources.

Business function applications

Some use cases for enterprise search engines contains:

16.) Information management: Enterprise search engines can help organizations efficiently search and manage large amounts of data, including documents, images, and videos.

17.) Sales and marketing: Enterprise search engines can search through sales and marketing data, such as customer information, sales reports, and marketing materials, to identify trends and opportunities.

18.) Human resources: Search engines can help human resources departments manage and search through employee records, resumes, and other relevant information.

19.) Research and development: Enterprise search engines can explore research papers, patents, and other scientific data, helping researchers identify relevant information and make discoveries.

20.) Compliance and risk management: Search engines can help organizations search through compliance documents, regulatory requirements, and other risk management data, making it easier to identify and mitigate risks.

Further reading

Explore more on enterprise engine by checking out:

• Insight Engines: How it works, Why it matters & Use Cases
• Insight Engine vs. Enterprise Search: 7 Key Differences
• Top 10 Knowledge Management Tools: in-Depth Guide

Compare insight engines through our data-driven and comprehensive list of tools.

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External Links

• 1. Gualtieri, Mike(2017). “Cognitive Search Is The AI Version Of Enterprise Search.” Forrester. Revisited March 31, 2023.
• 2. “Inefficient Knowledge Sharing Costs Large Businesses $47 Million Per Year.” Prnewswire. 2018. Revisited March 31, 2023.
• 3. “Bringing Healthcare Analytics to the Point-of-Care @ Mayo Clinic.” Elastic. Revisited March 31, 2023.
• 4. “How the Elastic Stack Changed Goldman Sachs.” Elastic. Revisited March 31, 2023.
• 5. Sng, Alvin; Simon, Hachey (2016). “How Airbnb manages to monitor customer issues at scale.” Medium. Revisited March 31, 2023.