Between 2020 and 2023 the OpenSource Connections (OSC) team helped develop a ‘search management’ practice at Competec Group, headquartered in Mägenwil, Switzerland. Competec Group, which posted a revenue in 2021 of 1.12 billion Swiss francs, consists of a number of brands including online retailer Brack.
Search Management is a practice of developing and maintaining business rules and using these to rewrite search queries to return improved results, for example adding synonyms or boosting results from particular categories. It can be used to fix mismatches between terms the user types in a search bar and what terms are indexed, respond to seasonal requirements and to address specific business interests such as promotions or partnerships. Search Management allows teams to respond very quickly (often within minutes) to changing requirements or market conditions without the need to re-index product data.
OSC helped the Competec team install and configure the open source Querqy search query rewriting plugin for the Apache Solr search engine used by the Brack website, which allows user queries to be flexibly rewritten according to a set of rules. OSC also provided training for the Competec team and acted as search managers for thousands of query rewriting rules in several languages, continually writing and adjusting rules to deliver relevant results and drive online sales. OSC also helped develop an overall search strategy and acted as technical consultants.
Together with OpenSource Connections, we have successfully built up our search management over the past 3 years. Their expertise and commitment have contributed significantly to this success. OpenSource Connections has supported us throughout the project both in operational search management and strategic search engineering. We have greatly appreciated their know-how and are very satisfied with the cooperation. Thank you very much for your valuable support!
Andris Hew, Team leader product data & search management, Competec Service AG
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