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Siderean Software Outlines Strategy for Digital Content Navigation to Advance Next-Generation Information Access

Posted on: Wednesday, 9 November 2005, 09:00 CST

Siderean's Unique Approach to Navigation Reveals the Full Scope of Digital Content Available to Users to Improve Decision-Making, Time-to-Revenue, Customer Satisfaction and Content Policy Compliance

Siderean Software, a leading provider of comprehensive turn-key digital content navigation solutions, today outlined its strategy to advance the usability, efficiency and quality of digital content access applications. Navigation shows what is available and provides an intuitive framework for efficient exploration, discovery and retrieval of pertinent digital content.

By addressing the inherent functional and business limitations of today's search tools through its unique approach to navigation, Siderean helps content consumers and online shoppers confidently find and use the digital assets best matched to their requirements. Using faceted navigation to organize and reveal the entire universe of digital content, Siderean's Seamark Navigator provides visibility for all assets, including structured and unstructured information, in a single view. Users can quickly discover and select what is of most value to them from a rich context of content offerings. As a result, Siderean's navigation scheme enables organizations and their customers to benefit from better-informed decisions, faster time-to-revenue, more compelling creative output, and improved customer satisfaction.

The "Insufficiency of Search" Creates the Navigation Opportunity

Organizations worldwide are experiencing exponential growth in the volume of their digital assets, and are realizing that critical business information is spread across multiple silos of relational databases, content management systems, file systems, collaboration tools, and e-mail. Worse, the number of silos are growing rather than shrinking, including blogs, RSS feeds, and wide-ranging Web content. In fact, according to an IDC report, "The high cost of not finding information" (IDC #29127), typical knowledge workers spend about two and a half hours per day, or roughly 30 percent of the workday, searching for information. Based on these estimates, IDC assumes an enterprise employing 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $48,000 per week, or nearly $2.5 million per year trying to locate and retrieve information.

Siderean's Seamark Navigator can transform inefficient search activity by mapping digital assets in a logical and easily consumable way, before users begin their exploration and retrieval process. With a Siderean Seamark navigation experience, users are not forced into a process by which they must know how to ask for what they need, nor do they need to know what kind of assets are available to begin a search. Also, because all digital content types are made equally accessible, users benefit from seeing the big picture before drilling down through to specific results to find the answer they are seeking.

Siderean Gives You Confidence You Have Selected the Right Assets from the Best Available Content

"Unlike today's enterprise and online commerce search tools, a navigational experience provides users with a truly rich framework for information discovery with capabilities previously not offered in the market," said Robert Petrossian, CEO, Siderean Software. "With navigation, users can pivot from one facet or topic of interest to another without encountering a search dead end. They also can tag digital assets to enable other users to benefit from their work. And, by leveraging open standards that integrate easily into existing environments, users can generate navigation applications within a few hours. These are significant differentiators for us in that users can experience immediate value."

Siderean Applies to the Digital Realm What Works in the Physical World

Navigation allows users to browse, discover and find information in a way that pinpoints results. Imagine a bookstore or library with no visible inventory, and only a clerk to ask for assistance. In this example, which demonstrates the inherent limitations of traditional search, a shopper is not aware of the kinds of books the store carries or specializes in, whether it has books on the shopper's desired topic of interest, and how many books relate to that topic. All the shopper can do is to provide the clerk with a few descriptive terms, which at best results in a list of the most popular books, not necessarily the ones most suited to the needs of the consumer. In contrast, with a navigational experience that spotlights the full scope of available items, shoppers quickly get a sense of the store's organization, characteristics, and quantity of material available for selection as soon as they enter. The clerk becomes only one way to find what is desired. A shopper can freely move from one area of interest to another, such as looking for books available on a topic, identifying what other books the author has written, and finding whether there is a paperback addition of the desired book. This experience delivered online is what Siderean considers to be Navigation.

Siderean Leads the Navigation Market with Uniquely Usable Solutions

"When it comes to information finding, search is only half of the equation," said Sue Feldman, Research Vice President, Content Technologies, IDC. "The other half of any good information access system requires browsing and navigation tools that make it possible for users to explore without having to come up with a direct question. Browsing answers the question 'What's here?'. While this may seem like a simple requirement, underneath a good browsing and navigation system are a set of complex categorization and metadata extraction tools. The more intuitive the approach, the more the underlying technologies must work to create the illusion of simplicity. Failed queries and inaccurate questions account for many search failures. Browsing enables users to find what they need even when they don't know how to ask the right questions."

Customer Pay-offs Are Real and Immediate

"Because Siderean understands our need to deliver to users a complete view of a vast amount of content in an organized way, our visitors have quick access to the information they need from our ever-growing repository of articles," said Todd Koym, Program Officer for the Edgerton Foundation, which helped Environmental Health Sciences launch EnvironmentalHealthNews.org in 2002. "Siderean's navigational experience, which incorporates search as a basic element, sets them apart from other search products or home-grown information management systems. Seamark's faceted navigation allows our site's visitors to quickly find content relevant to a wide variety of topics. Seamark Navigator also helps us distribute the content by enabling other organizations to create customized feeds and syndicate our content to their own site. Since working with Siderean, the amount of information on our site has more than tripled, but Siderean has made it very easy for our visitors to find what they're looking for as it pertains to their many and varied interests."

About Siderean Software

Siderean Software, Inc. provides organizations with comprehensive turn-key navigation solutions for enterprise digital content and shopping catalogs. Siderean's Seamark Navigator reveals the full scope of digital assets and cataloged items available to enterprise users and customers, presenting a discovery and precision search framework for navigating to the most pertinent choices. Ideally suited for a wide variety of markets and organizations, Seamark Navigator improves overall business performance by providing a clear, contextual map of available digital materials, quickly directing users to all relevant assets or goods, leading to better individual and group decisions, content usage and purchasing. Founded in 2001, Siderean is backed by leading investment firms Clearstone Venture Partners, InnoCal Venture Capital and Red Rock Ventures. For more information about Seamark Navigator, please visit www.siderean.com.

Source: Business Wire

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