R&D Employees' Top Challenge Is Lack of Access to Existing Knowledge and Expertise, Coveo Digital Poll Reveals

QUEBEC--(Marketwire - Jun 20, 2012) -

• According to a digital poll conducted by Coveo, the unnecessary replication of pre-existing work is the biggest productivity challenge among engineering and product development teams.
  
  
• In the poll, conducted via Twitter and posted to LinkedIn and Facebook in May and June, 46 percent of respondents cited issues surrounding previously completed projects, noting that the inability to access that information is the biggest challenge in leveraging knowledge for business benefit. Forty-two percent stated that while they may be aware of work completed by colleagues in close proximity, it is difficult to understand what knowledge and expertise is available across globally distributed organizations.
  
  
• In addition, 31 percent of respondents referenced an issue with too many systems, making it difficult to know exactly what information is available where and how to access it. Thirty-two percent called out the issue of employee turnover and the loss of intellectual property as a hindrance, as current employees recreate previously completed work.
  
  
• Accenting the insight deficit challenges within engineering and product development organizations, a mere 6 percent of respondents noted that they do not have an issue with information fragmentation, while 19 percent noted the confluence of multiple issues -- geographically dispersed teams, lack of access to previously completed work, silos and employee turnover -- as impediments to a more productive work environment.
  
  
• The collective knowledge of an organization is not only critical to its success, but is truly the competitive differentiator. Forward thinking companies are embracing advanced indexing technology, enabling organizations to access and share contextually relevant knowledge in order to collaborate in real time, and hence to go to market faster with more innovative products.
  
  
• Coveo's Insight Solutions take companies beyond advanced enterprise search to unlock knowledge by consolidating, correlating and discovering information relationships across systems, behind the firewall, in the cloud and on social channels. Coveo's advanced indexing technology leaves data where it resides, and consolidates it in a virtual information integration. Insight Consoles present role-specific information mash-ups, showing, in real time, everything an engineer or product developer needs to see, including who has what expertise, regardless of where the data resides. In addition, the user interacts with the information in a conversational format, enabling dynamic information relationships to be created and explored.
  
  
• Coveo Insight Solutions:
  • Drive innovation by leveraging intellectual property -- from employee expertise to existing knowledge, regardless of location;
  • Quickly and easily identify customer issues and trends to foster new product development and quickly correct product issues -- before they become pervasive;
  • Use past discoveries, tests and more to speed time to market with highly differentiated products and services;
  • Increase insight velocity and departmental agility.
    
    
• For more information on this and other recently published Coveo sponsored surveys, please visit www.coveo.com. Also download the Company's eBooks "10 Essential Steps to bring Insight into your organization" and "2012 Guide to an Insightful Customer-Centric Organization."

Quotes:
Diane Berry, SVP Marketing and Communication, Coveo: "Engineering and product development are the lifeblood of many organizations -- without innovation pushing development, businesses cannot advance. At the same time, as noted in the findings of our digital poll, innovation often lags because of a lack of access to actionable insight. Coveo works with many leading-edge organizations that have been able to speed more innovative products to market through gaining actionable insight, resulting in increased revenue and an overall improved bottom line."

"These results underscore the challenges R&D departments face, such as a lack of cross-geography collaboration which in turn leads to slower time to market with new products, and lower levels of innovation. Companies are unable to innovate incrementally, on top of previous work, and constantly 'reinvent the wheel,' even after implementing multiple collaboration platforms."

About Coveo
Coveo transforms companies' ability to gain insight from diverse and overwhelming amounts of unstructured and structured data, whether it exists behind the firewall, in the cloud or in social media. Coveo's intelligent indexing technology connects broadly with and crawls all systems to create a virtual integration layer, from which role-based Insight Consoles present consolidated, correlated information mashups. Greater insight enables more effective and efficient customer service, more relevant customer experiences, increased sales and shorter sales cycles, faster innovation for better product development and ultimately, increased profitability.

Coveo customers range from Fortune 100 companies such as Lockheed Martin, PepsiCo and Verizon, to Global 2000 companies such as GEICO, CA Technologies and T-Mobile, to mid-sized businesses such as Terumo Medical, IBM Netezza and Boston Children's Hospital. For more information, visit www.coveo.com, follow us on Twitter @coveo or like us on Facebook.