Business Impact Article - Posted 5/25/2009

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National Instruments

Enterprise Search 360: Achieving a single search platform across the enterprise

Like many growing companies, National Instruments had accumulated a wide range of data sources over time, both structured and unstructured. There were at least four search platforms to access its array of data sources and different search engines were used for internal and external requests which was hampering customers’ search results and sales opportunities. National Instruments saw that a single search solution  was needed to gather and integrate different content connectors quickly, reliably and would be easy to support. National Instruments was quickly attracted to the FAST platform’s versatility, flexibility, and capability to expand. Inside four months the FAST Enterprise Search Platform solution was fully implemented by National Instruments’ team without the assistance and added cost of professional services personnel for the installation.

National Instruments is a leader in computer-based measurement and automation. With nearly 4,000 employees in 40 countries and headquarters in Austin, Texas, the company is a global player with a local touch. National Instruments recently earned a place on Fortune’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” for the seventh year in a row.

National Instruments is a trailblazer in “virtual instrumentation,” which involves using personal computers and software to replace the functionality of traditional laboratory instruments such as oscilloscopes. The company serves a client base of over 25,000 companies, including more than 90 percent of the manufacturers on the Fortune 500 list. It derives agility from the diversity of its customers: since no one industry accounts for more than 10 percent of the company’s revenue, National Instruments is well-placed to resist volatility in any particular customer segment.

Challenge

Like many fast-growing companies, National Instruments had accumulated a wide range of data sources over time, both structured and unstructured. For example, the company’s intranet included data that users had placed here and there on file servers and in HTML, much of it without metadata. Similarly, the company’s applications engineers, who needed to be able to use the technical support portal to respond promptly to customers’ queries, were accessing everything from data in corrective action reports to structured knowledge bases.

At the same time, the virtual instrumentation leader was using at least four search platforms to access its array of data sources. Different search engines were applied to internal and external requests. External searches were further siloed, hampering customers’ ability to obtain search results and limiting the company’s sales opportunities. Further, the demands of responding to each search application were more than the company’s support functions could handle.

National Instruments saw that what was needed was a single search solution that could easily gather and integrate different content connectors. Ideally, its taxonomy would make it easy to “bucket out” the content for rapid access. The preferred solution would operate quickly and reliably and would be easy to support.

Solution

Evaluating vendors of search solutions, National Instruments was quickly attracted to the FAST platform’s versatility, flexibility, and capability to expand. Inside four months of the decision to go with FAST, the FAST Enterprise Search Platform solution was fully implemented by National Instruments’ team members—without requiring the assistance and added cost of professional services personnel for the installation process.

FAST’s impact was apparent from the get-go. Its solutions were successively and successfully deployed in several application areas. The initial deployment was on the company’s intranet. Diverse and decentralized information became well-defined, aggregated, and connected. Employees were able to find the information they needed in a timely manner. The FAST technology then met the challenge of the company’s IT knowledge base, which was built within Lotus Notes. Now users can search using the powerful FAST platform and receive results that populated their Notes databases. This example of seamless integration with the company’s existing systems underscored FAST’s usability—and proved to be right on target with National Instruments’ initial goals for a search provider.

Next, FAST’s capabilities enriched the internal technical support portal that allows National Instruments engineers respond to complex queries from customers. When faced with questions on implementations and installations of intricate equipment, the engineers need to access a range of information sources. And, they must access that information during working hours—in the company’s Germany and Japan offices as well as in the United States. FAST put the information at their fingertips quickly, 24 hours a day, and in nine different languages. Such versatile capabilities were a first for National Instruments.

On the customer-facing side of its Web site, the company was able to vastly expand and improve its offerings. Customers are already benefiting from improved product information in their online shopping carts. The company can now revamp its offerings under the Resource Links heading: links to product manuals, product certifications, evaluation software, and other product information were automatically updated, completely eliminating broken or outdated links without manual effort. The FAST technology also automatically skewed results for these resources based on the customers’ interests, tailoring the information to their exact needs.

In addition, as the technology became “smarter” through the FAST platform, the search function allowed for greater human imperfections, such as misspellings in search fields. Since National Instruments’ customers are often typing intricate, technical terms such as “accelerometer,” the ability to return results despite the incidence of butterfingers significantly shortens the time between search query and results and reduces the chance that frustrated customers will quit the site.

With FAST’s enterprise search platform, we can think ‘out of the box’ in terms of managing our data and have a solid solution that meets our business demands for quickly and accurately retrieving information across our entire enterprise. Jeff Watts Search and Community Manager, National Instruments

Benefits and Results

In two short years, National Instruments has reaped significant, quantifiable results in every area where FAST technology has been implemented.

For example, major improvements in the effectiveness of the online customer support function now mean that customers are using this feature 60 percent more than before the FAST implementation. The result: considerable cost savings because there is far less traffic going to National Instruments’ call center. At the same time, the company has seen a 40 percent increase in traffic to the Resource Links section of its Web site because visitors can now easily access more current and customized offerings.

The customer-facing Web site is highly robust. Despite receiving millions of queries daily, it boasts an impressive 99.99 percent uptime. And where previously this global company’s applications engineers were supported with English-only content, now they can access content in nine different languages.

Why FAST?

National Instruments chose FAST because it wanted to be supported by a successful, vision-driven company that wouldn’t leave it with just the source code at the end of the day. National Instruments needed a vendor that was committed to helping it push through to full completion of its projects.
 

For more information about FAST please visit:
www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch