Technical Proposition
Search
ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
Why Read this
Technical Proposition?
Digital content – particularly rich media content – has become the currency of marketing for
today’s business enterprises. As Accenture Interactive recently wrote, “Content . . . fuels and sustains
the marketing activities that connect businesses with customers and drive business outcomes. Content is
to business what water is to life . . .” 1
The volume and variety of digital content used by enterprises has been growing dramatically for
several years, and the growth shows no sign of slowing. This unprecedented growth elevates the
importance and increases the challenge of making content resources easily findable by marketers,
creative personnel, and other enterprise stakeholders. Digital asset management (DAM) and
product content management (PCM) software solutions can help enterprises cope with the everincreasing volume of content if they enable users to easily find the content resources they need.
Read this Technical Proposition to learn how the DAM/PCM solution offered by ADAM Software
leverages flexible, intuitive, and powerful search functionality and related tools to address the
content findability challenge.
ADAM Software NV
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
Contents
Why Content Findability is Critical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Search Functionality in ADAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Faceted Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Search Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Search Synonyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Partial Field Value Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Customized Search Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Saving and Sharing Search Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Content Aggregators in ADAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
Why Content Findability is Critical
The amount of digital content used by large enterprises has been growing exponentially for the
past several years. The volume of content has become so enormous that many enterprises are
challenged to manage their content effectively. In a recent Accenture Interactive survey of more
than 1,000 senior marketing leaders in seventeen countries, over 50% of respondents said they
have more digital content than they can effectively manage. 2
It is also clear that the explosive growth of content is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Eighty-three percent of the respondents in the Accenture Interactive survey said they expect the
volume of their digital content to increase over the next three years. 3
As the volume of content grows, making content resources easily findable becomes more
important and more challenging. A recent analysis by SiriusDecisions concluded that 28% of all
the content owned by B2B companies is not used because potential users are not aware that it
exists, or because it is difficult to find. 4
Digital asset management and product content management software solutions are designed
to help enterprises manage their ever-increasing volume of digital content more effectively
and efficiently. But a DAM/PCM system will only be successful if it enables users to easily and
quickly find and access the specific resources they need. Therefore, a robust DAM/PCM solution
will provide capabilities that directly address the content findability challenge. One of these
capabilities is fast, powerful, and user-friendly search functionality. It is also important, however,
for a DAM/PCM solution to provide other mechanisms for organizing content assets is ways that
enhance practical content findability.
There’s no longer any doubt that content findability is a core requirement for any enterprise-class
DAM/PCM solution. As the amount of content continues to expand at a breathtaking pace, the
speed with which marketers, content creators, other internal stakeholders, and external business
partners can accomplish vital tasks is largely dependent on their ability to easily and quickly find
needed content assets and share those resources with colleagues and business partners.
ADAM Software NV
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1
ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
Search Functionality in ADAM
The digital asset management and product content management solution offered by ADAM
provides several capabilities that are designed to make content resources easily findable. While
powerful search functionality is an essential component of the content findability solution,
it’s important to recognize that search may not always provide the easiest or most efficient
mechanism for finding content resources.
To address this circumstance, ADAM enables enterprises to make search unnecessary when it is
possible to predict what content resources a user is likely to need. Both enterprise leaders and
individual users can use content grouping capabilities in ADAM to eliminate the need for search
in many cases. The most significant content grouping capabilities include Spaces, Collections,
and Saved Search Views, all of which are discussed in detail later in this Technical Proposition.
These capabilities enable users to treat search as a “second option” that is used when the content
resources they need cannot be found in one of the preconfigured content groups.
ADAM also enables enterprises to adapt search functionality to reflect the actual search behaviors
of users. For example, enterprise leaders can use ADAM’s search reporting tools to monitor what
users are searching for, what searches are not successful, and what search terms are popular. Then,
they can use ADAM’s content grouping, metadata management, and synonym capabilities to
overcome search challenges and improve their users’ search experiences.
The search capabilities of ADAM’s digital asset management and product content management
solution are highly flexible and configurable, which enables enterprises to tailor search
functionality to meet the needs of diverse types of users. Role-based search makes it more likely
that a user will find the specific content he or she needs when searching in the manner he or she
naturally prefers.
ADAM delivers exceptional search capabilities through the implementation of the Elasticsearch
enterprise search engine. Elasticsearch provides a strong set of robust features and has a long
record of proven performance in large enterprise environments. For example, it was built from
the ground up with distributed computing in mind, which enables ADAM to deliver search
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
functionality that is highly scalable. In addition, clusters in Elasticsearch have built-in resilience,
which enables ADAM to provide search functionality that exhibits high availability.
In a DAM/PCM solution, the ultimate objective of search functionality is to enable users to easily
and quickly find the content they need. ADAM provides several capabilities that enhance users’
search experience and make the search process more effective and efficient.
º Flexible faceted search capabilities that mirror the usability of the modern web shopping
experience
º Search suggestions that are fast, configurable, and contextually aware
º The ability to configure and use search synonyms that are linguistically and culturally
appropriate
º The ability to perform searches using partial field values
º The ability to customize how search results are displayed so that individual users can easily see
the content attributes that most relevant for their needs
º The ability to search in one or more languages
º The ability to save searches and share search results with colleagues and/or business partners
Faceted Search
Faceted search has become the de facto
standard for navigating and analyzing
large datasets. Facets enable users to refine
the results of a search by applying filters
that essentially create additional search
parameters. For example, suppose that
a user performs a search using the term
furniture and receives a long list of results.
The user can then filter these results by
color, type (chairs, tables, etc.), material (wood, metal, etc.), region, brand, rights level, and any
other data available on the assets or products.
Facets can help users make productive search choices. They reduce the likelihood of getting zero
search results, and they enable users to more easily and quickly get to the information or content
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
they want to find. Therefore, using meaningful facets enhances the search experience and enables
users to search as efficiently as possible.
Faceted search is available for all ADAM components, including assets and products. ADAM
provides enterprises an exceptional level of flexibility when implementing and configuring facets.
ADAM’s solution includes an extensive set of facets that enterprises can choose from, some of
which can be customized. Customizable facets allow enterprises to select which specific values
should be contained in the facet. So, for example, the Creator list facet allows enterprises to select
only certain users or user groups to include in the facet.
Facets in ADAM are also dynamic. Enterprises can configure different facets for different types
of users and different types of content. So, for example, an enterprise can enable a product
manager to see one set of facets, while a graphic designer would see a different set of facets even
when both users perform a search using the same search term. Lastly, facets in ADAM are easy
to manage. Enterprises can easily add or modify their facets and update their facet structure and
behavior as their needs evolve.
Search Suggestions
ADAM enables enterprises to provide users
with search suggestions that help them
complete search queries and increase
the likelihood that they will find the
information or content they need. When
search suggestions are enabled, users will
see suggested search terms when they start
typing in a search box. Search suggestions
in ADAM are fast. They load immediately and
appear as soon as a user has entered 1-3 characters.
ADAM’s search suggestion functionality is highly flexible. Enterprises can determine which data
fields suggestions will draw from (for example, don’t load suggestions from a comments field).
Suggestions can be set system-wide or for specific sites, user groups, or individual users. For
example, product managers may see suggestions from a set of data fields containing product
information, while brand marketers may see suggestions from asset and campaign-related fields,
ensuring that the suggestions are relevant to the user role and thus enhance the user experience.
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
In ADAM, a user will never see suggestions for content that he or she does not have permission to
access, which helps enterprises maintain content security and avoid the use of content resources
in impermissible ways.
ADAM’s search suggestion functionality uses fuzzy search logic to overcome minor spelling or
typographical errors made by a user when entering a search term. For example, enterprises can
configure ADAM to generate cheese and chest as search suggestions if a user types “chese” in a
search field.
Search Synonyms
ADAM also allows enterprises to create and implement synonym rules to increase the findability of
content. Synonym rules can enable users to find needed information or content even when they
do not use the enterprise’s specified vocabulary. ADAM supports three types of synonym
rules—equality, expansion, and contraction.
For example, to create an equality synonym rule, system administrators simply enter a list of terms
that are “equal in meaning.” When a user enters one of these terms in a search field, ADAM will
execute the search using all of the terms contained in the synonym rule. Synonym rules can also
be used to expand or contract the terms used to execute a search.
ADAM supports synonym rules in thirty-three languages, which enables global enterprises to
implement synonym rules that will be relevant and useful for a linguistically and culturally diverse
workforce.
Partial Field Value Searches
In an ideal world, users of a DAM/PCM
solution would always use the correct term
when performing a search, but the reality
is that users aren’t always sure of the exact
search term to use to find the content they
need.
To help unsure users find the content they
need, ADAM’s search functionality includes
partial pattern matching capability, which
allows users to enter a part of the information they are looking for and see all records or content
that match the partial input. With partial pattern matching, a user who types “rism” or “priz” in a
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
search field will find results for “prism.” Partial pattern matching is available when performing a free
text search, and it can be particularly helpful when a user is searching for information or content
based on structured or patterned data such as an SKU number, a telephone number, or a postal
code.
Customized Search Display
To provide a good search experience, the search functionality of a DAM/PCM solution must enable
users to intuitively define search parameters and quickly evaluate search results to determine if the
desired content has been found. ADAM makes it easy for users to quickly evaluate search results
by enabling enterprises to customize how search results are displayed based on the roles and
needs of user groups or individual users.
Enterprises can specify which data fields and related field values are displayed in search results
and customize the styling of fields in search results at the user group and user level. For example,
ADAM’s search functionality can be configured so that a product manager will see one set of data
fields in search results, while a content creator will see an entirely different set of fields in his or
her search results. This enables users to easily see the attributes of content resources that are most
relevant for their specific needs.
Saving and Sharing Search Views
In large enterprises, marketing, product
management, and other content-intensive
activities are often collaborative efforts
that involve several individuals. The ability
to share search results among multiple
enterprise stakeholders can improve both
individual productivity and the productivity
of collaborative group efforts. ADAM makes
it easy for users to save the results of their
searches and share those results with colleagues.
Search results can be used to inform and support a variety of work activities. For example, a
marketing project leader could use a search to identify content resources that are potentially
relevant for an upcoming campaign. He or she could then share these search results with other
team members and use them as the basis for making work assignments relating to the campaign.
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
Content Aggregators in ADAM
The flexible, role-based search capabilities in ADAM provide a fast, powerful, and user-friendly
way to find content resources. However, search is not always the easiest or most efficient way
for enterprise stakeholders to find and access the content they need. So ADAM provides other
mechanisms of organizing, categorizing, and describing data or content to make it more easily
findable. We call these mechanisms aggregators, and the two most significant aggregating
mechanisms are Spaces and Collections.
Spaces
In ADAM, Spaces are groups of data records
or content resources that are designed
for a specific audience or that contain
related types of information. For example,
an enterprise could create a Space for the
content resources typically used by its
outside sales reps.
Each Space can be configured differently,
with different faceted search options and
sub-folders to browse within. The definition of which assets will appear in a Space can be based on
any descriptive metadata field, resulting is focused and always up-to-date sets of assets needed by
each user role.
Spaces are normally, but not always, used to create relatively permanent groupings of data
or content, and they can hold data or content resources that fall into several classifications or
categories in an enterprise’s formal taxonomy. Content resources in Spaces are easily accessible in
a portal-like user experience.
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
Collections
ADAM’s Collections feature provides users an additional way to group or categorize data or content
resources to improve findability. ADAM Collections are very similar to “personal lightboxes” or
“saved baskets.”
Even when content resources are well
organized using detailed metadata, a user
may still want to group content resources
based on different, and often ad-hoc,
criteria. For example, a marketer working
on a new marketing campaign may want
to create a Collection for all of the content
resources that are related to that campaign.
Or, a graphic designer may want to create a
Collection to hold working files until a project is completed.
Collections are an easy way to group content resources regardless of the enterprise’s formal
classification structure and perform a range of batch actions from one interface screen. More
specifically, the Collections feature enables a user to:
º Group content records regardless of the classification to which they are linked (the same
content record can be part of multiple Collections)
º Give colleagues or business partners access to the Collection, allowing them to see or even
add and remove content resources from the Collection
º Apply all downloading and ordering actions directly from the Collections interface
º Copy a whole Collection in one step
º Create a job directly from the Collections interface
.
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
Notes
1.
Content: The H2O of Marketing (Accenture Interactive, 2015).
2.
Ibid.
3.
Ibid.
4.
2014 State of B-to-B Content Survey (SiriusDecisions, 2014).
ADAM Software NV
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[email protected]
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ADAM Software Technical Proposition:
Search
ADAM Software
Technical Proposition
Contact
ADAM Software
ADAM Software US Inc
Kortrijksesteenweg 1108A
1515 Broadway
9051 Gent
New York, NY 10036
Belgium
United States
P: +32 9 381 63 36
P: +1 212 520 1028
F: +32 9 381 63 46
Email: [email protected]
Web: adamsoftware.net
About ADAM Software
ADAM Software is a leader in empowering enterprises to manage digital assets and
product information. Our Smart Content HubTM is used by global brands to create,
manage and distribute content for world class omnichannel customer experiences.
Our customers include LEGO, IKEA, adidas, Philips, Home Depot, Mary Kay and
Luxottica/Oakley among others.
ADAM Software NV
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