I'm aware of the little solid triangle indicator for the material applied to an object. Also, there is search function. but, i rarely get it to work. its bad especially when there are duplicate names for maps and materials and it is case sensitive and fails even if there is a accidental space before or after the name or if the name has multiple words. it would be great if the search function worked even if a part of Material/map name has the keyword.
so, It would be great to have a visual indicator for the Material tree when the object is selected in the viewport. especially when there are hundreds of materials.. maybe a highlighter or a translucent bounding box when we select the object. so that we can straightaway pan/scroll to the concerned material