CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
17 October 2005
Implementation Investments
BHP Billiton Selects Endeca to Power New Collaborative Knowledge Base
Endeca, a provider of Guided Navigation®, search and analysis solutions announced that a global exploration team within BHP Billiton Petroleum Limited has selected the Endeca ProFind® search and navigation platform to power a new collaborative knowledge base. Deployed by Endeca partner Blue Fish Development Group, a consulting firm specializing in enterprise content management, the solution is designed for information access and sharing by BHP Billiton geoscientists across the globe. BHP Billiton's global team selected the Endeca platform after evaluating the relative merits of other search and navigation solutions.
BHP Billiton's petroleum geoscientists are tasked with finding and investigating potential energy reserves and play a key role in minimizing risks and costs associated with exploration, while maximizing the revenue potential of these resources. In their pursuit, these teams generate and collect enormous amounts of information that is captured in a variety of ways, from videos and photos to Word documents and presentations to highly structured databases. Organizing this wealth of information-literally valued at tens of millions of dollars-in a way that could be easily accessed and shared became a daunting challenge, and one that had a direct impact on costs.
"It costs tens of millions of dollars to drill a well, and drilling rigs cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to operate. By sharing new best practices, lessons learned and relevant research, our geoscientists can better predict opportunities and risks associated with potential new reserves," said Sam Clayton, Knowledge Management Specialist, BHP Billiton Petroleum. "The Endeca/Blue Fish solution has been designed to allow us to share our knowledge more effectively."
The Endeca ProFind platform allows BHP Billiton's geoscientists to search and browse all multimedia files, seismic and geological data, MS Office documents and presentations and any other material related to their research through a single interface. As opposed to a single, fixed taxonomy or hierarchy, the Endeca solution creates and exposes multiple paths to the same information-ensuring discovery of all relevant information and reducing the time and effort to explore and analyze multiple, related data sets. In addition, the new search and navigation solution proactively shows BHP Billiton's geoscientists all the ways that this varied information is characterized and related. This takes the guesswork out of how to best describe information-and form a search query-that will return the most desirable, comprehensive and relevant results.
"Many prospective search buyers spend a lot time and effort worrying about how a search engine finds relevant information, but comparatively little understanding how different approaches map to the actual searching behavior of their users. In contrast, the BHP team came into the buying process with requirements around collaboration, understanding, and exploration-a much deeper connection of what their geoscientists were seeking and how they were looking for it." said Steve Papa, founder and chairman. "The combination of our technology, Blue Fish's content expertise and a thoughtful, innovative customer like BHP provided the foundation for a truly unique and successful solution."
Used on websites, intranets, extranets, and within corporate enterprises, Endeca ProFind is a next-generation information retrieval platform that combines highly advanced search with Guided Navigation and Content Spotlighting capabilities to help people quickly and easily find the information most relevant to their unique needs. Endeca's approach to information retrieval mimics the human discovery process by integrating the two most common means of finding information online-searching and browsing-allowing people to continually adapt and hone their search based on their own determination of relevancy. Endeca ProFind's robust and easily managed Content Spotlighting capabilities promote relevant content based on defined rules, such as user profile or workgroup, search terms, navigation options, and time of day or day of the week. This combination gives organizations the powerful and intuitive tools to maximize the value of internal and external information, regardless of source, structure or file type.
Endeca's Guided Navigation, Enterprise Search, and Analysis solutions help organizations integrate, discover, and navigate enterprise data to solve business problems associated with information overload. Endeca's customers include a wide range of enterprises, including retailers (Barnes & Noble, The Home Depot, Wal-Mart); financial services (Bank of America, MFS Investment Management, Putnam Investments); manufacturing and distribution (IBM, Arrow Electronics, and John Deere); media and publishing (World Book and IHS) and government (the Library of Congress, NASA, and the National Cancer Institute). Endeca is a private company headquartered in Cambridge, MA. More information: http://www.endeca.com or info@endeca.com .
Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.
Tell us what you think of the CIMdata Newsletter. Send your feedback.
CIMdata is committed to your privacy. Your personal information will never be sold or shared outside of CIMdata without your express permission.