Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Hires Verity for Search and Classification

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has selected Verity K2 Enterprise (K2E), advanced search, classification and personalisation software as a key component in the overhaul of its external website. Verity K2E will be used by CIPDís Web site visitors and staff to search across over 50,000 information resources. By improving the way content is managed and organised, CIPD will deliver a better experience to its end-users and enable its staff to work more effectively and efficiently.

ìLike many companies, we consider information retrieval as something that shouldn’t just be done - it should be done well,î says Eileen Pevreal, head of IT for CIPD. ìFocus groups held with our members found that, despite many improvements over the last few years, they still expected more from our Web site than we were delivering.î

From an initial list of twenty potential solutions, CIPD, in conjunction with its Web development company cScape, produced a shortlist of five companies. Eileen Pevreal explains the final selection:

ìVerity had the best fit primarily because we wanted a robust, highly scalable solution that could meet both our internal intellectual capital management needs and work across our Web site to the benefit of our members and customers. The parametric search features were particularly attractive because of the multi-faceted nature of our information. Verity also understood the fact that technology isn’t a solution on its own and, as a market leader, the company gave us that extra comfort that the technology could deliver.î

CIPD will initially use Verity K2E to enable intuitive ’quick search’ for its Web site users, as well as K2Eís advanced search capabilities for users with more demanding needs. Individual content owners within CIPDís Library Services team will take responsibility for optimising their own content by applying metadata standards using the Intelligent Classifier within Verity K2E. In the future, CIPD will use Verity K2E internally as part of its intranet and internal information strategy.

ìCIPD has an extremely forward-thinking approach to enhancing the user experience and weíve been able to provide a solution that will suit them both now and moving forward,î says Simon Atkinson, managing director of Verity GB. ìCIPD is also working towards adopting the e-Government metadata standards (e-GMS), which meet the needs of its internal and external audiences. Verity K2E works well with these standards and we have past experience of e-GMS products. We look forward to working towards this with CIPDî.