The hidden cost of bad enterprise search
Your employees are wasting 1.8 hours per day searching for information. That's not a productivity problem. It's a multi-million dollar cost center hiding in plain sight.
1.8 hours/day
Time spent searching for information
McKinsey estimates the average knowledge worker spends 1.8 hours per day searching for and gathering information. For a 1,000-person company with an average salary of $85,000, that's $9.5 million in lost productivity per year.
Source: McKinsey Global Institute
$31.5 billion
Annual cost of failed knowledge sharing
Fortune 500 companies lose $31.5 billion annually because employees can't find the information they need. This includes duplicated work, wrong decisions from outdated information, and time wasted recreating documents that already exist.
Source: International Data Corporation
67%
Employees use 3+ apps to find one answer
Most employees switch between SharePoint, email, Workday, ServiceNow, Slack, and other systems to find a single piece of information. Each context switch adds cognitive load and time.
Source: Coveo Workplace Relevance Report
25%
Of documents are never found again
A quarter of enterprise documents are created, stored, and never discovered by the people who need them. This leads to duplicated effort, inconsistent information, and knowledge silos.
Source: IDC Enterprise Search Study
What bad search actually costs your company
| Cost category | 500 employees | 1,000 employees | 5,000 employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search time wasted (1.8h/day) | $4.8M | $9.6M | $47.8M |
| Duplicated work (est. 15%) | $715K | $1.4M | $7.2M |
| Wrong decisions from bad info | Hard to measure | Hard to measure | Hard to measure |
| New hire ramp-up delay | $240K | $480K | $2.4M |
| IT ticket volume (search-related) | $120K | $240K | $1.2M |
Based on $85,000 average salary, 250 working days/year. Search time from McKinsey Global Institute.
The fix costs less than one month of the problem
For a 1,000-person company, bad search costs ~$9.6M per year. QueryNow Search costs $75,000 one-time. AI-powered search reduces search time by 60%, saving ~$5.7M annually. The ROI is not a question. The only question is how long you wait.
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