An intelligent search platform is powered by artificial intelligence technology, which removes data silos and assists employees and customers to find the information they need rapidly and easily. End-users make use of intelligent search to extract information from anywhere Intelligent search and enterprise search are synonymous with natural language search, AI search, or AI-powered search and cognitive search.

Intelligent search solutions are built on architectures that can handle the performance demands of big data workloads. As they deliver the necessary scalability, cloud infrastructures with extensive API-driven integrations and automation are usually best suited for the task.

Communicating with Analytics Insight, Alexandre Bilger, the CEO at Sinequa sheds light on the powerful and intelligent search for enterprises that the company offers. He also gives insights into the role of disruptive technologies in the industry.

With what mission and objectives was the company set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

Sinequa was set up with the mission to offer enterprises the services that tech giants such as Google offer to the consumer: powerful and intelligent search. We recognized that enterprises' valuable information was not being used to its full potential and that an intelligent search tool would enable organizations to tap into the wealth of knowledge and expertise contained within their enterprise data. We knew that insight from existing data sources would drive innovation, efficiency, and productivity for businesses, ultimately helping them to grow and stay agile.

As the company has grown and gained momentum, its value has been acknowledged by key analysts in the intelligent search space. Sinequa has been repeatedly recognized as a leader by Gartner and Forrester, including in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines 2021, and in the Forrester Wave™: Cognitive Search 2021 reports. Our client base has grown to include significant players across multiple industries, including Alstom, AstraZeneca, Biogen, BMS, Pfizer, Siemens, Thales, TotalEnergies, and Volkswagen.

As the President and CEO of Sinequa for over 10 years, I have seen the company evolve and expand to deal with the increasing volumes of data that organizations now produce. As the quantity of data has grown, so have our technological capabilities and our scope to cater to different use cases. As Sinequa continues to grow, I am excited to see continued progress in the value it can bring to customers.

What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

Sinequa's platform is comprehensive and customizable, making it suitable for the highest value use cases. It's built to support professionals across a range of industries, from life sciences and financial services to manufacturing and intelligence agencies. Whether driving faster drug discovery and delivery or underpinning safety and compliance in the energy industry, Sinequa's unique value lies in its ability to provide insights highly relevant to the professional context. The platform automates the analysis of millions of files and offers a 360-degree view of all data sources, processes, and expertise. With these capabilities, the platform drives informed decision-making and acts as an enabler of vital processes.

Please brief us about the products/services/solutions you provide to your customers and how they get value out of it.

Sinequa's key offering is an intelligent enterprise search platform. The platform automates the extraction of meaning from unstructured content. To do this, it combines deep natural language processing (NLP), rich semantic analysis, advanced entity extraction, and machine learning technology. These capabilities enable the conversion of unstructured data into a clean and enriched searchable index. With this index, users can consistently find information that is relevant to them, as and when they need it.

Sinequa supports on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments and supports hosting on the leading cloud platforms. Sinequa recently partnered with Microsoft to run on Azure and, in July, announced the addition of Sinequa for Microsoft Teams.

How does your company's strategy facilitate the transformation of an enterprise?

Businesses today are increasingly focused on being data-driven to make better decisions, as well as drive efficiency and innovation. However, many organizations continue to focus only on their structured data – accounting for 20% of enterprise data – as a means to gain insight, missing out on the wealth of information and knowledge that can be gained from unstructured data, representing the other 80%. Sinequa's platform enables companies to tap into both structured and unstructured data to gain insights that ultimately drive business efficiency, innovation, and by extension, growth.

How is IoT/Big Data/AI/Robotics evolving today in the industry as a whole? What are the most important trends that you see emerging across the globe?

Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is only really in its infancy. While companies are beginning to use AI to examine their quantitative data, qualitative data remains relatively neglected. Tapping into qualitative and unstructured data is a growing and important trend, especially as the quantity of data that companies produce continues to grow. There's a wealth of information in unstructured data, which includes everything from PDF documents and emails to videos and images. AI solutions can help an employee or customer extract value quicker, without having to read and digest all the data. If such information is effectively harnessed, the value for businesses could be immeasurable.

How can businesses efficiently extract the value from data, without increasing cost and complexity?

Extracting value from data can be a costly and lengthy process. The challenge is made harder by the exponential growth in the volume of data being produced by businesses. In this context, a well-thought-out data strategy is essential, and the right tools are needed to underpin such a strategy. The ultimate goal is to obtain a solution that enables the extraction of value from all sources of data, whether structured or unstructured. To best harness the value of data, employees should be able to use one interface to search across all applications and all types of data. With such a tool, searching for information is made simpler and faster, ensuring that knowledge and expertise are not buried and lost.

What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

Sinequa is on a strong growth trajectory and is seeking to accelerate its international expansion. In 2020, the company performed well, despite the circumstances of the pandemic. It increased its total customer billings by 30 percent and signed new logos across the globe, from global pharmaceutical and healthcare manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to the second largest energy and power company in the world, Électricité de France (EDF).

Continued expansion in the North America region, is our key focus moving forwards, and we've hired several strong executives – including Bob Lewis as the Senior Vice President of North America Operations this year to help us implement the growth strategy.