ROI of the Google Search Appliance: Intranet Deployments

If you’ve ever used Google, you already know what enterprise users like most about the Google Search Appliance: it gives them fast, accurate access to the company information they need to do their jobs well. A closer look uncovers a less obvious benefit: a return on investment (ROI) so high that for many companies, the Google Search Appliance pays for itself in less than a month. Integrating hardware, software, and support in a complete search solution, the Google Search Appliance makes your company more productive without the large up-front investments and hidden costs of traditional enterprise search products.

Work smarter and faster with the Google Search Appliance.
The Google Search Appliance allows workers to find and share needed information quickly and easily. This means tighter turnarounds, a more nimble team, and shorter time-to-market. The Google Search Appliance enables you to make the fullest use of the knowledge your company has already created – often finding documents you didn’t even know you had. Google’s high adoption rates also boost your ROI. Because workers already trust and know how to use Google search, intranet search use often doubles within weeks of deployment. You won’t be spending money on training employees because they are already familiar with how to use Google search.

Balance these benefits against the high cost of not finding information: bad decisions, duplicated efforts, missed opportunities – especially in information intensive industries where up-to-the-minute data and accelerated time-to-market are competitive.

“ The number of searches performed each day has more than doubled. Our employees are inspired to use our intranet search when they hear it’s powered by Google.”
Bill Corley, Manager of Intranet Technology, National Semiconductor

Want proof?
Do the math. You don’t have to take our word for it. The table on the following page shows a dollars and- cents calculation of ROI for the Google Search Appliance in companies of various sizes and search profiles. This analysis is based on a comprehensive study of search usability by the Nielsen Norman Group, which quantified the value of effective search by studying the performance of employees across a variety of search tasks.
“ Poor search was the greatest single cause of reduced usability across intranets we have seen. . . Search usability accounted for an estimated 43 percent of the difference in employee productivity between the best and worst intranets.”
Intranet Usability, Nielsen Norman Group, November 2002

	Heavy Searchers	Medium Searchers	Light Searchers
Hours spent searching (annually)1	150	50	38.7
Time saved by replacing poor search (%)2	53.4%	53.4%	53.4%
Time saved (hours per week, per user)	1.54	0.51	0.40
Value of time saved (per user per year)3	$2,311	$770	$596
Value of time saved (for 500 users)	$1,155,443	$385,148	$298,104
% ROI for 500 users	6,540%	2,113%	1,613%
Payback period	11 days	33 days	42.6 days
% ROI for 250 users	3,220%	1,007%	757%
Payback period	22 days	66 days	85.2 days

1 The High Cost of Not Finding Information, IDC, July 2001
2 Intranet Usability, Nielsen Norman Group, November 2002
3 Based on an average $60,000 annual salary ($40,000 base plus 50 percent benefit burden)

Consider one typical example. As the table shows, a company with 500 “medium search” users would achieve an ROI of over 2,000 percent by improving its search – which would pay back the cost of the Google Search Appliance in a single month.

“ An enterprise with 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $48,000 per week – $2.5 million per year – due to an inability to locate and retrieve information.”
The High Cost of Not Finding Information, IDC, July 2001

Google’s plug-and-play solution cuts administrative overhead.

The Google Search Appliance packs Google’s award-winning search technology into a plug-and-play solution integrating hardware, software, and support. Optimized for compatibility and easy, rapid deployment, “Google in a box” makes administration easy. As a result, your IT team is free to focus on challenges more suited to their talents. For example:

One Fortune 500 customer now needs only part of one IT administrator’s time to run the Google Search Appliance, versus the nine administrators their previous solution required.

The World Bank cut its search costs by approximately 80 percent switching to the Google Search Appliance. The cost of a new Google Search Appliance, which included software, hardware, and support, was five times less than what they were paying for maintenance alone on their previous search solution.

After almost two years of manually tagging search results for its internal clinical portal, Kaiser Permanente’s search solution still wasn’t providing the required results. Switching to the Google Search Appliance gave Kaiser clinicians better search results instantly.

“ Right out of the box, without any tweaking at all, the Google Search Appliance was more effective than the system we’d been working on for a year and a half.”
Brad Hochhalter, Director, Permanente Knowledge Connection, Kaiser Permanente

Avoid the hidden costs of traditional enterprise search.
The fully integrated, plug-and-play Google Search Appliance avoids the large up-front investment and hidden costs of traditional enterprise search products.

No added deployment costs. Traditional enterprise search products require costly professional services for implementation, while the Google Search Appliance works right out of the box.

No maintenance fees. In many cases, the 20-25 percent annual maintenance fee charged by enterprise search vendors is greater than the entire annual license fee for the Google Search Appliance.

No added hardware or support costs. The Google Search Appliance includes hardware, software, support and product upgrades – eliminating significant, incremental costs of many competing products.

No manual tweaking of documents. Unlike traditional enterprise search products, the Google Search Appliance takes the burden of organizing information off the administrator with an automated approach that doesn’t require manual tweaking of documents.

No training costs. Because users already know how to use Google, they can begin using the Google Search Appliance immediately and avoid expensive, timeconsuming training.

World-class search that works for your bottom line.
The Google Search Appliance is simpler, more reliable, and provides a lower total cost of ownership than traditional enterprise search products can offer. Give your workforce the world-class search they need at a price you can afford.