AMI-SME is a EU-funded project that aims to structure and automate the identification, gathering and analysis of market information. It is designed to support the internationalisation process of small and medium-sized enterprises. 13 research and company partners from five European countries participate in the development of a methodological toolbox and an Internet search tool.

The project description is available in all the languages of the participants, using the flags on the upper right side. The project duration has been from November 2004 to January 2007.

AMI-SME designed and implemented a software prototype for a domain model assisted Internet search with integrated document storage and knowledge organisation. AMI-SME software supports systematic search activities that go beyond single-step retrieval.

AMI-SME combines search engines that are available on the Internet with a flexible storage system for documents and knowledge items obtained from a search. Such an ontology based search and storage system makes Internet search more intelligent and aligns it closely to the users’ demand.

More about the AMI-SME software
In AMI-SME, a search can be named and modified, stored and re-executed. Search history and abstracting provide fast access to the relevant search results. It is possible to filter, sort and store the results for further processing or documentation. Both documents and knowledge items can be described and commented by the user in various aspects. Moreover, there is the opportunity to distinguish several independent search projects with separated queries, documents and knowledge items.

A domain specific information model (“Ontology”) serves as organisational assistance in AMI-SME. It is displayed in form of a knowledge tree (like a folder structure) and is used to label and retrieve downloaded documents as well as identified knowledge items. During the query definition this domain model also suggests search topics and keywords to the user.

The targeted user groups for the practical test of AMI-SME are small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) that want to expand their business to other countries, as well as their consulting partners or business associations: they need to collect and interpret information about their specific industry niche in a particular geographical area. This is mainly based on weakly structured information, of which the user has to extract the relevant content himself.

Therefore, a general marketing and internationalisation domain model is integrated in the AMI-SME system. This model will be automatically extended by the user while working with a distinct project. Additionally it is possible to specify this domain model outside of the system to the needs of any industry, company or project.