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August 16, 2024
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Buyer Guide: How to Choose the Best Insight Engine Software

Your search for the perfect insight engine software has come to an end. This guide is the only one you need to make an informed decision. 

Insight engines refer to the combination of artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML) into one single platform. The purpose of this tool is to provide users with the timely data they need to properly do their jobs.

Unlike knowledge bases and enterprise search, which you can use to search on demand, insight engines proactively deliver information in key business moments. 

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

The insight engine market will continue to grow and is expected to reach $5.75 billion by 2029. More companies will be curious about what insight engine software is and explore the 10 best options on the market. 

You can learn all the above — and more — by reading this buyer’s guide. 

What is Insight Engine Software?

Insight engine software is a search platform that uses artificial intelligence to find, analyze, and index different kinds of data from multiple sources. 

Both customers and employees can easily find the information they seek, no matter its format (raw data, spreadsheets, video files, etc.).

It can also analyze both structured and unstructured data

In a nutshell, it’s a smart tool that helps you find actionable insights hidden within big data. As a result, it enables you to make better business decisions at a faster rate.

Still, how exactly does insight engine software work? By magic? 🪄 Surely not! 

It has a very simple explanation…

How Do Insight Engines Work?

Simply put, insight engines work by combining different technologies to try to understand and interpret why users are searching for something. The end goal is to find the most relevant data to give to your clients or employees. Without them wasting time sifting through large dumps of info. 

But what are these technologies that insight engines use? Let’s see: 

  • Artificial intelligence: Insight engines use AI to analyze big data volumes quickly and accurately. It takes inspiration from various sources of data, such as emails, social media, text, images, and other digital media. 
  • Machine learning: ML and AI go hand in hand. Both work together to analyze algorithms and sniff out new patterns and trends. But ML can also make predictions and offer suggestions for improvement.  
  • Natural language processing: Through this technology, you can write your queries in natural language, like having a chat over coffee with a friend. The insight engine can understand what you’re trying to say and give you accurate results. 

There are plenty of other technologies that insight software can use, such as deep learning and Logical Data Warehouses (LDW). However, it highly depends on the tool you choose. 

So, an insight engine platform works to understand what users look for and provides relevant information. Is that everything?

Not at all! Let’s look at the benefits. 

What Are the Benefits of Using Insight Engine Software?

You might be wondering, “Why do I need to analyze my data sets?” 

According to a study by Deloitte, 49% of respondents say analytics helps them make better data-driven decisions. So it’s not a bad idea to invest in insight engine platforms. 

In fact, it has plenty of benefits: 

  • Improved decision-making: This is a HUGE advantage for plenty of companies. Since you get relevant insights when you need them the most, you can identify issues and improve your workflows. 
  • Enhanced productivity: Insight engine software gives you access to all your data — and at a faster rate, too. As a result, since you reduce the effort needed to extract valuable insights from your data, you free your employees’ time. And allow them to focus on more creative tasks.  
  • Efficient scalability: These tools scale with your company’s needs. They’re capable of handling large volumes of data, no matter how complex. Without sacrificing quality, accuracy, or performance.
  • Cross-platform integration: Good news, everyone! You don’t have to switch platforms when using insight engine software. Most integrate with your existing tools, so you can access precious insights wherever you work.

  • Personalized recommendations: Remember we talked about ML? Well, here’s where it comes in handy. Insight engine software can deliver personalized suggestions based on user behavior, preferences, and needs, to increase customer experience and satisfaction. 

So, you now know how insight engines work and what their benefits are — but what about their most sought-after features? Let’s talk about those. 

What Key Features Should an Insight Engine Have?

There are plenty of insight engines in the sea. Probably too many. Each of them is unique, with plenty of features to make your head spin. How are you gonna decide on just one? 😖

When it comes to evaluating insight engines, there are a few features that you really need to consider. They’ll help you improve the user search experience and enable better data discovery.

So, here they are: 

  • Natural language answers: You should look for insight engines that use NLP to understand your search queries. You must get the correct answer to your questions (or as relevant as possible), not some mumbo-jumbo. 
  • Intelligent search: Your search solution should give you accurate info across diverse data sources. No matter how complex the query is. Make sure the tool can find documents, wikis, conversations, and other info in milliseconds. 
  • Seamless integrations and APIs: You use enough tools every day. Adding one more to the pile is gonna make a mess of things. Choose an insight engine software that integrates with your favorite tools so you can perform searches without switching tabs. 
  • User-friendly interface: If you don’t understand the tool, your clients and employees surely won’t either. The insight engine software you select should be easy to use and intuitive, so you can search easily. 
  • Secure access and permissions: Insight engine software works with sensitive company information. It should give you control over who accesses your repository and who it is visible to. 

So, you understand your needs and know what features to keep in mind when evaluating insight engine software.

You’re now ready to explore the best insight engines for your business.

The 10 Best Insight Engine Software Programs

This is it. The moment you’ve been yearning for. Don’t worry; the wait is well worth it. 

Let’s talk about the most popular insight engine software for 2024. 

1. Guru

Guru provides companies with plenty of features that make handling key insights a breeze.  

It’s a company wiki AND an employee intranet platform. But it’s also a powerful enterprise AI search tool that makes you forget traditional search even existed in the first place.

This means that you’ll get instant answers right into your workflow. Plus, you’ll stop foraging through irrelevant search results. 

Guru gives you personalized, accurate, and relevant information based on your role, location, and more. 

Besides, you’ll say sayonara to context-switching. No more switching apps like you’re a juggler at a circus. Guru connects with all the favorite tools you already use, so you can hunt for answers more efficiently.

Look how easy it is to ask something directly in Google Chrome: 

But you can search across other platforms like Slack, Box, Microsoft Teams, DropBox, etc. 

See more of Guru by watching our on-demand video

2. Coveo

Coveo Relevance Cloud is an AI search and generative experience platform suitable for strict industries like healthcare, telecommunications, etc. 

Source: G2

This insight engine software mostly uses semantic search, GenAI answering, AI recommendations, and unified personalization to give people the most relevant answers.

With predictive search, Coveo also automatically detects intent, behavior, and language. 

What’s more, Coveo has context-aware recommendations based on where customers are in the buyer’s journey. The tool will offer relevant suggestions, helping people discover the products or content they’re most likely to be interested in next. 

Coveo doesn’t work alone. It integrates with many tools, such as Salesforce, Adobe, Slack, and Zendesk. 

3. Stravito

Stravito offers a purpose-built storage and insights platform perfect for enterprises focusing on market research. 

It’s a self-service tool that uses AI-powered search for swift access to the most relevant results. With Stravito, you make your insights accessible to every employee and internal stakeholder. 

Source: G2

Moreover, this solution uses generative AI to get instant answers with direct links to sources. Why is this important? Because you can fact-check each answer and ensure it’s accurate. 

Aside from being a user-friendly app, Stravito also has natural language search and secure enterprise cloud-based environments. 

This tool integrates with various apps, including Google Drive, Tableau, Slack, and Mintel. 

4. IBM Watson Discovery

IBM Watson Discovery styles itself as an AI-powered cloud-native insight engine that unlocks the hidden value in your data. 

Source: G2

It has intelligent document understanding and content analysis capabilities that help companies discover new trends and patterns. But IBM also gives you answers to complex topics and specific use cases quickly and efficiently. 

This platform has a special feature called Smart Document Understanding (SDU). It’s basically a visual ML tool that lets you label parts of the text (headers, tables, etc.). Why? So it can understand what makes your business tick. 

Later, it’ll use that information to provide only the most relevant answers.

5. Elastic Enterprise Search

Elastic Enterprise Search (formerly Swiftype) is an AI-powered search app that uses real-time reporting to analyze massive sets of data. 

Source: Capterra

Elasticsearch gives you the tools you need to build search platforms for both your employees and clients. Through vector databases, semantic search, and model management, you can deliver relevant answers to all user queries. 

Moreover, this solution has built-in data analytics that enable you to make better business decisions and streamline operations. Using API, native, or connector clients, this tool is perfect for indexing sources and content as you scale. 

What about integrations? Elasticsearch mixes with tools like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. 

6. Algolia

Algolia is an AI search solution that helps businesses understand what users are looking for. 

This insight engine uses search API to build relevant search experiences for customers and employees. It also employs NeuralSearch — a technique that combines semantic search with keyword matching to give users the info they need. 

Source: G2

Algolia can personalize each search result to engage visitors, but it also offers recommendations based on user preferences. Besides, Algolia provides an extensive library of front-end components (filters, paginations, etc.) to craft the user interface of your dreams. 

Algolia has many partnerships with API clients and integrations, such as Shopify, Adobe, BigCommerce, and Contentful. 

7. xFind

xFind is an AI-driven enterprise search platform that uses a fusion of NLP and generative pre-training transformer (GPT) to improve your customer support. 

Source: G2

This tool is compatible with various file types, which gives you the ability to search across multiple databases, intranets, and applications. In addition, it has global language support so anyone can perform search queries in a natural and intuitive way. 

xFind has a pretty high tolerance for typos and uses synonyms to refine the search results. 

You’ll also benefit from enterprise-grade security that keeps your private info safe and secure. And, of course, xFind plugs into your favorite apps. 

Think Jira, Sitecore, MindTouch, and Confluence. 

8. Intelligence2day

Comintelli’s Intelligence2day is an insight engine designed for market and competitive intelligence.

Collecting, organizing, analyzing, and sharing your data and knowledge is easy for this platform. Intelligence2day does it all automatically, with a strong focus on markets, competitors, trends, and technologies. 

Source: G2

This tool works by unifying your information from internal and external data sources into a single place. It can analyze the large volume of content to help you uncover new growth opportunities. 

Through a hybrid classification process, Intelligence2day indexes and tags all info that arrives in the system. 

Use Intelligence2day alongside platforms like Slack, SharePoint, Yammer, and Active Directory (SSO). 

9. IDOL

OpenText IDOL is an advanced search, knowledge discovery, and analytics solution for finding valuable insights in your unstructured data. 

Source: Microfocus

Using advanced AI and ML features, IDOL analyzes various sources of data, including text, audio, video, and images. It’ll give you quick access to the data you need and lets you ingest, view, scan, and classify the most important information. 

Moreover, as it analyzes text data, IDOL uses NLP and optical character recognition (OCR) to understand the tone and sentiment. As a result, it can give users the answers they truly need. 

10. Google Cloud Search

Google Cloud Search, available as part of Google Workspace, is a cloud app designed to search for data in Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Calendar. 

Source: Capterra

It’s only available with a Workspace license. This means you have to opt for a pricing plan if you want to use it to its full potential. But the good news is that it integrates with third-party sources like Salesforce, SAP, and more. 

This tool gives the best answers to all your questions and can easily deliver relevant data and files. Besides, Google Cloud Search makes sure only authorized users can access your content. 

How to Choose The Best Insight Engine Software

You’ve seen the best insight engine software. They all look good, don’t they? But it raises a pretty big question: how do you know which one’s the right one for you

It’s not a decision you make haphazardly. We hope that these tips will steer you in the right direction: 

  • Security: An insight engine should have all the security measures and compliance certifications in place to make sure your data is safe. The tool needs to have authorization features that prevent the risk of data breaches. 
  • Integration: As you know, insight engine software collects data from multiple external or internal sources. Not being able to integrate with other tools will only hinder your efforts. Find tools that mesh well with your favorite apps like Slack, Google Drive, etc.
  • Scalability: People generate large volumes of data every year, according to the study Data Never Sleeps. That’s why your insight tool must keep up with your growing company and do so both accurately and fast. 
  • Ease of use: Users should have a nice experience with the tool, not struggle with it. Select insight engine software that has an intuitive interface, robust search options, and easy platform navigation. 
  • Demos and trials: Last but not least, try to find tools that have a demo, free trial, or even a free plan. It’ll help you see if it’s the right fit for your business; if it’s not, no harm done. 

The Bottom Line

We’d like to tell you which is the best insight engine software for you. But that’s your decision to make; we’re only here to help you reach a conclusion faster. This buyer’s guide contains everything you need to know about insight engine software — and then some. 

With the future holding great things for this market, there’s not much stopping you from investing in such a solution. 

Why not begin this journey with Guru? Try it for free today.

Key takeaways 🔑🥡🍕

Why are insight engines important?

Insight engines are relevant now because they help companies analyze their data more efficiently. It’s all about automation and how it enables better decision-making, allowing managers to improve digital experiences.

Is there any free insight engine software?

Yes, all insight engine tools on this list offer a free demo, trial, or plan. 

Keep in mind: a free plan means you get limited capabilities, so you might not get the full experience.

What is the difference between a search engine and an insight engine?

The main difference between a search engine and an insight engine is the way they handle data. 

Search engines focus on retrieving relevant data based on user queries. They rely mostly on keywords to deliver the requested information. Think Google, Bing, or Yahoo. 

Insight engines dive deeper into why people search for something. These tools interpret user search queries, analyze the data, and uncover new customer trends.

Search everything, get answers anywhere with Guru.

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