U. Reimer and D. Karagiannis (Eds.): PAKM 2006, LNAI 4333, pp. 279 – 290, 2006. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006 Increasing Search Quality with the Semantic Desktop in Proposal Development Mark Siebert 1 , Pierre Smits 2 , Leo Sauermann 3 , and Andreas Dengel 3,4 1 Siemens Business Services GmbH und Co OHG, Munich, Germany Mark.Siebert@siemens.com 2 BTU Cottbus, Germany psmits@informatik.tu-cottbus.de 3 KM Dept, DFKI 1 , Kaiserslautern, Germany {sauermann, dengel}@dfki.de 4 CS Dept, DFKI, Kaiserslautern, Germany Abstract. Quicker response times and less production costs of proposal devel- opment require further automation of sales assistant functionality in CRM envi- ronments. Automation still struggles with the handling of abstraction and the subjective character of knowledge. Based on the knowledge creation framework the paper outlines and tests the increase of search quality with Semantic Desk- top technology. The discussion of peer-to-peer settings and semantic concepts illustrates the influence of individual perspectives on search quality. It reveals first potentials and benefits for process-integration, like semantic CRM and il- lustrates approaches to increase knowledge worker’s productivity. 1 Introduction Quicker response times to proposal requests and less production costs for standard proposals without quality reduction are current CRM requirements within increasing competition and market dynamics in the IT service market. This aligns with Daven- ports petitions to increased knowledge worker’s productivity [5]. He enhances the traditional optimization triangle of processes, IT and people by their physical working environment and their personal networks. Responding to customer requirements sales managers today either search for simi- lar, existing, and successful standard proposals or ask an assistant to come up with a good draft. Other than proposals in product business, service proposals require a value proposition derived from and designed to the individual customer needs rather a value proposition of the product characteristics. Existing knowledge management tools or Proposal Automation Tools [15] already support general functionality like document handling and proposal generation. They lack deeper process integration, higher quality of search and respect of the individual characteristics of knowledge. With its new on-demand CRM platform SAP [11] provides a virtual sales assistant guiding the user through the steps within the sales process (e.g. creating a value proposition or analyze competitor’s products) and 1 German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, http://www.dfki.de/km