Fishing for answers: The use of research repositories to effectively source insight findings

Global communication across research teams is now made possible through the use of on-line research repositories that allow members to maximize the impact of insight in their business. These repositories allow users to directly download research results from their browser, allowing faster, more informed decision-making and avoiding the repetition of results that may already exist within the company. However, many research managers have discovered the paradox that increasing the size of on-line repositories – by loading historical data findings onto the system – can actually reduce the ability of their internal clients to find the information they require.

So how do research teams build their research repository while also ensuring the portal is still user-friendly to internal users?

Indexed text searching (where users can create document lists based on a word or phrase) provides a partial solution, but the search results can quickly become too long when the repository begins to include thousands of documents. Consequently, users start abandoning their search without finding the information they require. Additional filtering based on other information (metadata) can help users to create more targeted searches, but introduces other time-consuming problems such as:

1. Increased administration, as metadata has to be set for every document or project entry in the repository.
2. Complicated search pages, where users are presented with too many options and are unsure whether their search query is likely to find the information they require. This problem is particularly important when trying to ensure that users have a positive experience when they first use the research portal.

Online platforms such as Research Reporter are built on the understanding that key users will be time-poor senior decision makers who are likely to use the application on a sporadic basis. Research Reporter uses an extensible search capability that makes it easy for these users to quickly find the information they need, no matter the size of the research repository.

In addition to indexed searching, Research Reporter allows users to filter and find documents in the research repository using project information automatically collected through the project life cycle.

Options for information filtering includes metadata such as project initiator, initiating department, start date, project manager, agency, agency contact, project status, project type, etc. Additional metadata based on other keywords relevant to the organization can also be added at either the document, or project level.

Research Reporter’s search pages can also be re-configured without programming, which maximizes the potential for a positive search result for internal clients by:

1. Increasing search options available as internal clients’ familiarity with the system grows and the size of the repository increases
2. Creating separate repositories based on “pre-filtered” search pages using any project metadata (eg separate repositories based on project type for tracking studies, qualitative and quantitative projects)

Users find the information they need – even with very large data sets – typically without training and without the research team having to incur additional administration in tagging projects and documents. The result is an information search that provides the insight an individual requires quickly and efficiently, helping to promote the use of research around the business and making the most of an organization’s valuable research assets.