[Grimblewald]

it may still not work, but try explaining using flashy analogies. For example, the internet without search algorithms is not the economic powerhouse we know it as today, and the quality of search made companies like google the giants they are. All this is because of the enormous economic impact good search has, say a user must make just 5 searches a day, but this turns into 20 because of poor search results, resulting in re-querying in an attempt to turn up the right result, multiply that wasted time by all employees and at face value you're costing yourself an enormous amount of money as a company, not to mention the compounding loss due to workflow interruption. With a graph or two you should be able to convince most of the fact good search = massive productivity gain.