Presented at KM Showcase 2019 by Todd Fahlberg (Enterprise Knowledge) and Hasan Syed (Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago), the presentation offers a case study from FHLBC on how Syed led his organization in the design and implementation of an enterprise search tool called “Unified Search.” Further, Syed and Fahlberg discuss how FHLBC is prepared to scale the enterprise search solution to include additional repositories, address differing security needs, and measure the success of the current implementation.

1. Enterprise Search
The Key to Findability
Hasan Syed, FHLBC (hsyed@fhlbc.com)
Todd Fahlberg, Enterprise Knowledge (tfahlberg@enterprise-knowledge.com)

2. “The best customer service is
if the customer doesn't need
to call you, doesn't need to
talk to you. It just works.”
– Jeff Bezos

3. Hasan Syed Todd Fahlberg
Vice President,
Knowledge Management
Senior Analyst,
Knowledge Management
Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago Enterprise Knowledge

4. About FHLBC
The mission of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago is to partner with our member
shareholders in Illinois and Wisconsin to provide them competitively priced funding, a
reasonable return on their investment in the Bank, and support for community investment
activities.
We’re one of 11 Federal Home Loan Banks chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1932 to promote
homeownership. Our members include banks, thrifts, credit unions, insurers, and community
development financial institutions throughout our district.

5. KM CHALLENGES
▪ Vast amounts of content are not
associated with any metadata tags
resulting in poor findability
▪ Important content is stored in multiple
repositories making search efforts
redundant
▪ Must be able to enforce strict security
constraints
▪ Solution must be scalable to
incorporate bank-wide systems as
deemed necessary
CRM, Incident Management/Helpdesk
Wiki
Network Drives People’s Heads
Enterprise Data Warehouse
SharePoint

6. IT Support was the logical starting point to
create a scalable Enterprise Search Tool.
Enterprise
IT
IT Support
ORGANIZATIONAL CHART

7. CONTENT &
TAXONOMY STRATEGY
SEARCH
REQUIREMENTS
PROOF OF CONCEPT
DEVELOPMENT
SEARCH SOLUTION
IMPLEMENTATION
SEARCH SOLUTION
EXPANSION
01
02
03
04
05
Cleaned up and
prepared content for
search ingestion.
Gathered functional
and technical
requirements.
Developed PoC
and validated
requirements.
Performed UAT and
Implemented Search
& Semantic Tool MVP.
Take an agile
approach when
implementing
solutions across the
organization.
APPROACH

8. CONTENT STRATEGY
Analyzed and Inventoried Content
Performed Content Cleanup
Developed IT Support Business Taxonomy
Developed Content Types
Designed Content and Taxonomy Governance Structure
Task Output
Discovered 765 content items across 2 repositories.
IT Support Content Owners identified 488 content items
for archival, 145 to maintain as-is, 125 items that need
updating, and 20 for deletion.
Identified 284 concepts belonging to 4 schemes.
Identified and developed 7 content types.
Established a common set of standards and processes
that are designed to maintain and consistently improve
the enterprise taxonomy and content overtime.

9. REQUIREMENTS GATHERING
• Approached project with Agile
Methodology (i.e., PoC, MVP, and
Beyond)
• Identified security needs for each
repository
• Distinguished shared programming
languages between FHLBC and EK
• Established hosting needs
• Developed wireframe to more easily
gather functional requirements

10. PoC DEVELOPMENT
http://blink/ http://wiki/
Native Search Enhanced Search
Repositories
Repository Connector
Enterprise Search Tool
FrontEndBackEnd
The Enterprise Search Tool Proof of Concept (PoC) was developed to query content
from 2 repositories that were autonomously enhanced by PoolParty.

11. SEARCH IMPLEMENTATION
● Increased findability by
leveraging the 284
concepts or “tags”
contained in FHLBC IT
Support’s business
taxonomy
● Indexed 400+ content
items across 2 repositories

12. SCALING SEARCH SOLUTION
FHLBC Unified Search Tool
Unified Search
Business Departments
Accounting
Sales
Risk
Legal
Marketing
Information
Technology
Repositories
K:
H:
S:
X:
P:
Share Drives
Bank-Wide
Access
Collection-Level
Access
Document-Level
Access

13. MEASURING SUCCESS
Percentage of Submitted
Tickets
Average Time Till Ticket
Resolution
Percentage of Escalated
Tickets
Customer Support Satisfaction
Customer Perception of Search
Time
Customer Confidence in
Content Found
QualitativeQuantitative

14. NEXT STEPS & TAKEAWAYS
• Start Small
• Remain Agile
• Celebrate Wins

15. WE’LL BE ANSWERING QUESTIONS NOW
Q A&
THANKS FOR LISTENING
Q&A SESSION

16. TFAHLBERG@ENTERPRISE-
KNOWLEDGE.COM
LINKEDIN/IN/TFAHLBERG
HSYED@FHLBC.COM
LINKEDIN/IN/HASANHSYED
Hasan Syed Todd Fahlberg
CONTACT
TWITTER/@ZHHSYED TWITTER/@THETODDOLOGY