Pioneer Investments and the Google Search Appliance

I knew Google would be good, but both the technology and its ease of implementation have exceeded all my expectations. iQ Content have also been a pleasure to deal with: their expertise, professionalism and responsiveness have ensured that we can get the best from this great technology, with minimum fuss.

Google Search is also a big hit with our staff, who can now find the information they need, wherever it resides, using the Google interface they know and trust. As a result, people are using the intranet more, sharing information better, and getting more benefit generally from our information systems.

Every organisation that takes information management seriously should be running Google universal search.
Graham Kenny, Head of eBusiness, Pioneer Investments
Pioneer Investments   Pioneer Investments

Overview Pioneer Investments is a leading global investment-management company, with investment centres in Boston, Milan, Dublin and Singapore. For more than 75 years, Pioneer's unique mix of product innovation, original research, global reach and local knowledge has enabled it to deliver consistently exceptional returns for its clients. The company currently manages over $199 billion in assets worldwide.

The Challenge Turning data, information, and original research into actionable market intelligence and winning investment strategies has always been critical to Pioneer's success. To this end, the company continually invests in improving its internal information systems, ensuring that its people can access the exact information they need, when they need it. Over the years, this had resulted in a proliferation of internal databases, information repositories and systems. As a result, the company was looking for a way of tying these systems together and providing a single point of access to all corporate information assets. universal search seemed to be the solution. But they needed to ensure that search wouldn't compromise network security. And they needed to be absolutely sure that staff could access only materials they were authorised to access.

The Solution After conducting an extensive analysis of Pioneer's requirements and benchmarking a variety of universal search tools against these requirements, iQ Content identified Google's secure universal search solution - the Google Search Appliance - as the best fit for Pioneer's needs.

A preliminary installation involved installing the Google Search Appliance (GSA) into Pioneer's data centre and using it to index four data repositories: the corporate intranet, a Microsoft SharePoint portal, a shared network volume, and an internet site outside the corporate firewall. Upon completion of the initial installation, the Pioneer team noticed such an improvement in productivity and access to information that they commissioned iQ Content to extend the service, and roll it out across their entire network.

Google universal search is now been rolled out across the global Pioneer network, with customised search controls available on all the company's intranets. Pioneer staff have a single point of access to all corporate information, from a single search control, with the power and ease-of-use they are used to from Google.com. Access control ensures that people can access only the information they're entitled to. And the quality of search is such that staff can be confident that the most relevant search returns are always on the first page of search results.

The Benefits Within weeks of implementation, Pioneer has already reaped significant returns from its investment in the Google Search Appliance, such as:

  • Speed and ease of implementation: Because the GSA is an integrated hardware and software solution, and meta-tagging of information isn't necessary. It was up and running and delivering powerful results in a matter of days.

  • Improved knowledge sharing and internal communication: employees now have immediate access to all the information they need, through one easy-to-use interface, radically improving knowledge sharing and communication.

  • Improved productivity and reduced replication of effort: Access to the right information right away means there's less duplication of effort and less time wasted looking for the information.

  • Better management of network data and resources: Google search helped Pioneer identify duplicate and redundant data on the network, enabling them to archive duplicate material and reduce the amount of data in the shared volume by a massive 75%

  • Fully customisable interface, functionality, and results: the power of Google search, customised to exactly what Pioneer needed, seamlessly linking into internal systems and incorporating all company branding.

  • Security, network integrity and peace of mind: because the GSA resides within the firewall, and because it can be fully customised to incorporate existing security policies, Pioneer rests easy in the knowledge that all critical data remains as secure as it always has been.

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