Here is another in a series of notes from the Enterprise Search Summit connected with the  2009 KM World that focus on applications. This is part of the Enterprise Search Summit.   It is titled: Evolve From a Tactical E-Discovery Approach to Search and E-Discovery by Brian W. Hill, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research, Here is the session description.

During the next 18 months, initiatives to cut costs and rising regulatory demands will drive enterprise e-discovery investments. Although search is a critical component of e-discovery, enterprises Forrester surveyed use a grab bag of search tools and techniques for litigation or regulatory inquiries. Lacking an end-to-end approach to gather and filter information, few enterprises report having a holistic approach to e-discovery. A full two-thirds of Forrester respondents consider their e-discovery strategy reactive rather than proactive. This indicates overall enterprise readiness for e-discovery is dismal. In this session, Hill will demonstrate the need for information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals to collaborate with IT, legal, and business teams to understand how search technology can help cut e-discovery costs and mitigate risk. Formalized, cross-functional e-discovery programs that facilitate internal communication, encourage standardized methodologies, and provide a “big picture” view will help drive results. These programs can help support initiatives to synchronize e-discovery,
records management, and archiving.

Brian started by saying that eDiscovery solutions are not cheap but not using them can be much more expensive. Companies are grappling with regulatory issues and getting ready for possible litigation. Organizations have responded to this by rolling out a series of archives. The result is content and technology chaos that is difficult to search across and does not manage to mitigate legal risk.

There is massive fragmentation within many enterprises. Security and metadata can be very different and not connected.

eDiscovery is a large market but it is also immature. May organizations are having challenges here. There are different stakeholders including legal and regulatory and large set of technology options. eDiscovery now invites fear uncertainty and doubt. At the same time organizations are trying to take out cost.  (see my AppGap posts: Equivio Releases Relevance™ to Enhance eDiscovery and Darwin Ecosystem Brings Awareness Engine™ to Enterprise 2.0 eDiscovery).

There are different content types: email, collaboration systems, desktop files, etc. Email is the fastest growing content type.  However, the law says that all types of electronic content is subject to eDiscovery, including things like voice mail.  Only 20% of organizations surveyed felt their records were accessible and searchable.

There is a change point at the 5,000 employee level. There is more pain above 5,000 employees. Companies at this level feel more vulnerable and have much more complexity to deal with.  There is more to it than search. There needs to be proper legal hold capability within records management.   Brian looked at the records management vendors. Many people are using Sharepoint but it is not designed for this task. (see Forrester ECM wave report)

Less than half of stakeholders are satisfied with their records management.   Technology is not the answer. You need a well defined process that has proper stakeholder alignment. The market is fragmented and there are about 500 venders that address this need in some way.  But again the right process is the main need and it is perceived as the top challenge.  Defining defensible, repeatable process is key.

Records managers report all over the place in organizations. This is another example of fragmentation. There is gradual trend toward reporting form IT and legal.  IT and legal are key players here and Brian said he often finds that IT and legal have not met before.

There is a wide variety of maturity of this function within large organizations for those just starting to those very well developed. The company’s legal risk profile is a main driver of maturity, as well as how many times they have been sued.

One search approach is key words but you only find what you are looking for. You might not know the right key words.  I will add that this is a place where Darwin Ecosystem can help as it allows for discovery of relationships that you were not necessarily looking for. There are tools that use fuzzy logic, clustering, and other means to uncover key words that you did not think about.

The most commonly used technology to support search is operating system and desktop search. There are a number of shortcomings with this approach.  A very low percentage are using enterprise search.

In summary, it is much more than technology.  You need to define objectives, build queries, measure success, automate, review and analyze. You need a team of experts: legal, search, statistics, etc.   Make sure you have the right exec support. Get the right stakeholders. Develop a records retention strategy and policies. Create a consistent process.  Need to have integration between records management and search.  Should stay on top evolving case law.

Brian’s slides are available at  http://www.forrester.com/esswest09