One of the reasons most companies struggle when deploying Enterprise Search solutions is that these types of projects rarely have a business sponsor. Search, like email, is seen as core infrastructure so the project is typically tasked and budgeted to the IT group. IT naturally approaches the project as they would any other, and this is where the problem starts. The issue is that search is very different than other types of infrastructure.
One important difference between search and other types of infrastructure technology like Active Directory or Email, for example, is in defining the success criteria for the project. My experience in working on both traditional infrastructure projects and Enterprise Search is that on the former success is measured by deployment. Deploying the project on time and on budget is the focus of the initiative. This makes perfect sense when you consider the fact that users will use Active Directory or the Email system whether they like or not. Search is different in this regard.
I've seen many SharePoint Search initiatives that were successful from a deployment perspective, but very few people in the company adopted the technology and use it on a regular basis. This is the key difference. Users don't have to use the technology if they don't like it. The point here is that in Enterprise Search initiatives, deployment does not equal success. This is only the first step. User adoption should be the key success metric. Regardless of how you calculate the ROI of a tecnology investment, the more employees that use the technology on a regular basis, the higher the return. In search initiatives, the focus should be on driving user adoption to maximzie ROI.
More on this in the next post.