Information Please: A Search Engine With Soul

By Eileen McCluskey, Photos by Patrick O’Connor

Jim Baum ’86 is leading an information revolution that impacts everything from online shopping to the very way we use the Web.

Jim Baum, president and COO of Endeca, sits back in his sunny office, facing his visitor with a warm smile. Framed in the picture windows behind him, the Charles River glistens. Incoming e-mail messages announce themselves every few seconds, and his phone rings off the hook. Baum likes the bustle. Life is good. This is right where he wants to be: heading a fast-growing company that delivers technology that changes everything.

Baum and Endeca, a software company specializing in guided navigation systems for the Web, are a perfect fit. Baum has always enjoyed making computers do neat tricks. A small-town boy from Burnt Hills in upstate New York, Baum describes himself as “one of those kids who took things apart and put them back together.” When his Dad brought home an early-model Apple computer, “I became fairly enamored of that thing,” he says, grinning. He taught himself how to program in Assembly and Basic and was soon shooting spaceships in a game he wrote himself.

At WPI, Baum remembers learning Fortran in addition to his mechanical engineering classes. He recalls Professor Robert Norton as “a cool guy who linked engineering and computers.” This was in the mid-1980s, when most software programs were still punched out on cards for computers the size of conference rooms.

Poised at the head of an exciting new software company, Baum is not far from his boyhood days in Burnt Hills. He feels he’s playing a pivotal role in launching a technological revolution. “This environment is invigorating,” he says. “I know every day whether we’re moving the ball forward.”

The Online Revolution

Here’s what Baum’s Endeca is doing for the Internet today: Imagine you’re shopping for a birthday gift for your niece. She’s nine years old and you’re not sure whether she’s still into Barbies or would rather have the latest Harry Potter book. You go online shopping for the solution.

You’re not alone. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that retail e-commerce sales for the first quarter of 2003 jumped nearly 26 percent in one year. Billions of dollars are changing hands online—almost $12 billion in the first three months of this year alone.

Companies that want to get in on this action wisely place their wares on the Web. This is true across every sector of the economy, from music to mutual funds, books to Barbies. How do companies help shoppers delve into their wares, particularly if the customer has only a vague idea of what she wants? Shopping online often feels like entering a dark room and groping for something that must be in there, but can’t be found.

The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that retail e-commerce sales for the first quarter of 2003 jumped nearly 26 percent in one year.

Enter Endeca. Founded in 1999, the software company promised a revolutionary approach to online search and navigation. Endeca has kept its word to investors by reeling in well-established clients and making them very happy.

The florist 1-800-Flowers.com started using Endeca just in time for Mother’s Day, its busiest shopping day of the year. The Web site’s enhanced capabilities led to more fruitful searches; customers could easily find the perfect arrangement for mom. The company’s conversion rates—the ratio of searches to sales—shot up by double digits, and it measured a 20 percent increase in successful searches. Performance speeds doubled.

“Our business strategy is focused on providing customers with an exemplary online shopping experience. Endeca InFront with Guided Navigation and dynamic merchandising allows us to provide shoppers with an easy and interactive way to locate gifts for important occasions,” says Robert Wilson, director of Web site and direct marketing for 1-800-Flowers.com.

Endeca’s clients see positive results quickly, from a dramatically improved user experience to the fruits of that improvement, including increased sales and profitability, plus substantial hardware and software savings. Endeca’s customer base has grown exponentially, from just a handful of clients in 2001 to more than 75 today, spanning industries from electronics to manufacturing to financial services. Even more telling about the technology’s versatility is the fact that Endeca’s clients span applications, from corporations’ enterprise needs and business-to-business uses to online shopping.

On the enterprise side of its client list, Putnam Investments, a global money management firm, revamped its 401(k) plan business. Over 1,800 Putnam employees use the company’s Plan Sponsor portal, as do 11,000-plus human resources managers, senior executives, and benefits consultants within Putnam’s customer base of more than 2,200 companies. When Putnam rolled out Endeca’s Insight portal late last year, client service reps moved from merely answering data-driven questions (“What percentage of 20- to 30-year-olds are enrolled?”) to providing informed guidance (“Based on your 20- to 30-year-old enrollment, here is the best program for you.”). Plan managers quickly navigate Putnam’s huge data set along a variety of dimensions, including gender, location, age, and product type—without assistance from technical staff.

"Endeca will be a critical component of IT infrastructure. We'll be an important piece of the fabric that ties together all the different types of information, regardless of their form."

The Right Idea, the Right Time

One of the moving forces behind Endeca is Baum. He joined the company in 2001 after establishing himself as a businessman who recognizes a powerful new technology when he sees it—and who can bring that idea fruitfully to market.

From 1989 to 2000, Baum played a key role in nurturing Windchill, Parametric Technology Corporation’s software application that targeted the product lifecycle management (PLM) market. With this product, says Baum, “we defined the industry’s vision for PLM.” Windchill brought a coordinated, Web-based interface to all of the players involved in a product’s lifecycle—from engineers and manufacturers, to marketing execs and salespeople. Every player could access the latest product details and do their part to keep the momentum going, thus compressing the time from concept to finished product. Under Baum, Windchill’s sales grew from $0 to $200 million in its first two years.

Baum got the call to check out Endeca just as dot.coms were falling from the sky like so many shooting stars. He’d seen plenty of Web-based startups that didn’t have much substance behind the glitz. “My phone rang a lot with headhunter calls during the dot.com boom,” he recalls. “I saw a lot of bad ideas. Then along came Endeca.”

At Endeca, Baum found both a substantive idea and a kindred spirit, Steve Papa, Endeca’s energetic and bright CEO. “Papa’s idea was that the problem with online shopping is you can’t go shopping,” Baum explains. “Shopping is by default more a process of discovery than of searching for a particular item. Papa knew there had to be a better way than what was available at the time. So he hired a world-class technical team and they developed Endeca technology.”

Zen and the Art of Information

The Endeca story is much bigger than that of reshaping online shopping, or even making life easier for knowledge workers. Baum begins to sound Zen-like when he speaks of the future.

“We enable category convergence,” he says. What’s now seen as separate buckets of information—product data, business intelligence, Web portals like Putnam’s, or content management—Baum sees as one. “Those buckets were artificially created. In every case, what’s needed is strong information access and retrieval. People need usable information.

“Endeca technology is not just a search engine,” Baum explains. The early tools Endeca created were just the low-hanging fruit. Looking higher, Baum sees Endeca branching out into the very infrastructure of Web-based information technology. With a line into IBM’s WebSphere array of Web development software products, Endeca’s already realizing that vision.

“Endeca will be a critical component of IT infrastructure,” Baum predicts, referring in part to the budding relationship with IBM. “We’ll be an important piece of the fabric that ties together all the different types of information, regardless of their form.”

If Baum has his way, all Internet experiences—all quests for information—will be far more satisfying and fruitful than they are today because they’ll be backed by an infrastructure embedded with Endeca technology. In other words: get ready for an information revolution.

Information Please: A Search Engine With Soul

The Online Revolution

The Right Idea, the Right Time

Zen and the Art of Information

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