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Professional Services:

The Quest for Knowledge Sharing

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Google Search ROI

The main benefit of the Google Search Appliance is that it saves valuable professionals time', increasing the billable hours each professional can serve clients.

According to IDC, 56% of a knowledge worker's time -- and all practice professionals are knowledge workers -- is spent on either searching or gathering information for documents. Furthermore, a full 9% is spent on unsuccessful searches, providing for considerable margin for improvement.

Another startling fact is that knowledge professionals only spend 26% of their time on analysis of information -- which is the core task they are supposed to be working on. In most companies, it is merely a cost issue -- employees aren't as productive as they could be. But in professional services firms, doubling the percentage of time that practice professionals analyze information can have significant impact on revenue -- it can increase their billable hours.

According to Accenture, "Managers spend more than a quarter of their time searching for information necessary to do their jobs, and when they do find it, it is often wrong" - Accenture 2007 Survey.

Do the Math: ROI Calculations

For professional services firms of all sizes, directly impacting the productive time of their professionals can translate into a significant increase in revenue:


Firm Size Large Mid-Size Small
Number of professionals
 500 75 10
Annual man-days per professional 250 250 250
Billable Rate (per hour) $150 $125 $100
Chargeability (%) 65% 65% 65%
Billable Days per Professional 162 162 162
Revenue Per Professional $195,000 $162,500 $130,000
% Time Searching* 20% 20% 20%
% Time Searching Saved by Replacing Poor Search** 50% 50% 50%
Man-days saved (per professional) 25 25 25
Increase in Billable Days (per professional)*** 8 8 8
Increase in Revenue ($ per professional) $9,750 $8,125 $6,500
Increase in Revenue ($, firm-wide) $4,875,000 $609,375 $65,000
% ROI 4875% 2438% 1300%

* Minimum estimate of practice professional time spent searching (IDC estimate: 34%, Accenture: 25%)
** Percent of searching time that can be saved due to high quality search (IDC estimate: 53.4%)
*** Of all the man-days saved, assume only 50% of the regular chargeability of 65% -- because the firm may not have new work lined up

As demonstrated above, a small investment in the Google Search Appliance can have an enormous ROI for your firm. This is primarily generated through efficiently delivering on client work, to increase the billable hours of professionals. Over the course of one year, the extra billable hours translate into significant new revenue.

Google's plug and play solution offers other benefits without any of the 'hidden' costs of traditional search.

In addition to the benefits for the practice professionals and the bottom line, Google's solution generates high ROI for our customers because there are no 'hidden' costs for IT departments to implement the appliance. Benefits to the IT organization include:

  • Cut administrative overhead. - 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. 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.
  • No added deployment costs. - Traditional universal 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 universal 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 universal 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, time consuming 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 universal search products can offer.