New activities, outputs and outcomes for Enterprise Europe Network proposed by the sub-group of the Working Group Performance and Impact

Transcription

1 New activities, outputs and outcomes for Enterprise Europe Network proposed by the sub-group of the Working Group Performance and Impact Service activities and outputs A. Advisory services to SMEs 1) Regional/local events organised 2) Participants in regional/local events 3) Clients receiving individual advisory support B. Partnering activities for SMEs 4) Brokerage events/company missions organised 5) Clients in brokerage events/company missions 6) Meetings at brokerage events/company missions 7) Partnership profiles produced 8) Expression of interests received 9) Expression of interests made C. SME feedback activities 10) Clients in feed-back related actions D. Specialised services on behalf of Horizon 2020 and other EU-programs 11) Clients mentored/coached Service outcome 12) Achievements/success cases Enabling activities and outputs E. Visibility and information activities 13) Number of SMEs using digital services provided by the Network 14) Local stakeholder cooperation (only relevant if needed for political reasons) F. Networking activities 15) Enquiries answered from Network partners 16) Active contributions to Network activities 1

2 Flowchart of proposed new EEN activities, outputs and outcome 12) Achievements/ Sucess cases A) Advisory services to SMEs 1) Regional/local events organised 2) Participants 3) Clients receiving individual advisory supp. E) Visibility and information activities 13) SMEs using digital services 14) Local stakeholder cooperation B) Partnering activities for SMEs 4) Brokerage events/company missions organ. 5) Clients participating in events and missions 6) Meetings at events and missions 7) Partnership Profiles produced 8) EoIs received 9) EoIs made F) Networking activities C) SME feedback activites 10) Clients in feed-back actions 15) Enquiries answ.from Network 16) Contributions to Network activ. D) Specialised services on behalf of Horizon and other EU-programmes 11) Clients mentored/coached Enabling activities Service activities Service outputs Service outcome Enabling outputs Page 2 of 11

3 Definitions of outputs and outcome EEN staff must understand what is expected from them and what needs to be reported. Consequently, outputs and outcome need to be defined as something carried out. A definition should include: 1) Summary starting with You have, 2) Details/examples, 3) Clarification of what counts 1) Regional/local events organised 2) Participants in regional/local events You have organised, co-organised regional or local events in the geographical area covered by your organisation/consortium for existing and potential Network clients with the objective to raise their awareness about Network services, EU policies, EU programmes and funding opportunities, or to train them to enhance their skills and their capacity for internationalisation and innovation. Regional/local events can have different forms: Workshops, seminars, trainings, presentations, etc. and be stand-alone events or parts of other events. The event and its objectives should be published in advance and feature one or more speakers and it should be evident that the Network is organising or co-organising the event. Participants are mainly SMEs, but other organisations, such as SME support organisations, schools, universities, institutes, business organisations, regional/local authorities and stakeholders are also eligible participants. Preferably, participants should fill in an evaluation questionnaire. If an event was co-organised by two or more Network partners, it is up to them to decide how to share the participants between them. Double counting should be avoided. See also Event guidelines for further details. 3) Clients receiving individual advisory support You have provided individual advisory support to Network clients on issues related to increasing their competitiveness and their knowledge on financing, EU initiatives and legislation. The support include: Support on increasing their competitiveness, e.g.innovation management support, issues related to IPR, technology audits, business reviews, assessing the potential of ideas for new products and services, access to markets, etc Support on financing, e.g. funding opportunities, access to finance and related EU coaching and mentoring schemes, advice on EU programmes andhow to apply for calls and complete project proposals, etc. Support on EU initiatives and legislation, e.g. legal advice on how to comply with EU legislation (VAT, CE marking, public procurements, REACH, Ecodesign), assistance on debt recovery, contract and confidentially agreements, access to energy efficiency, climate and environmental expertise, etc. The support provided is the result of any type of query, questions or requests from your SME Network client. It is recommended to keep track of the service provided on each subject (e.g. number of questions answered or time spent on support service related to innovation support, financing or legislation). It is up to the Network partner to decide time spent on each client. It is the number of clients, not the number of services that counts. It is the number of clients that have received individual advisory support at least once during the reporting period. The service has been provided by you directly or by you via other stakeholders or support organisation. Page 3 of 11

4 4) Brokerage events/company missions organised 5) Clients in brokerage events/company missions 6) Meetings at brokerage events/company missions 7) Partnership profiles produced You have organised, co-organised or sent companies to a transnational brokerage/matchmaking events and/or company missions for Network clients. Events and missions are organised together with Network partners, either in your geographical region with companies from abroad visiting and meeting your local clients, or abroad in which one or more of your local clients participate, visit and meet foreign companies. Events and missions are registered in Merlin well in advance and are labelled and promoted as events/missions of the Network, even if external partners are involved as main organisers. If a Network partners organise an event or missions in another geographical area than the one covered by its consortium, the partners covering that area must be fully informed and involved from the start. Normally, it is the clients that you recruited to the event that counts, but it is up to the Network partners involved to share the amount of client participants and meetings (as well as the results and the achievements). Double counting should be avoided. Meetings refer to meetings that your clients had with foreign companies during events and missions. If one client was represented by two persons who had two meetings each, it is counted as one client and four meetings. Clients represented by Network partners should be kept to an absolute minimum, and if so, it should be evident for other participants that the client is represented by someone else. See Event guidelines for further details. You have produced partnership profiles/proposals from your clients. The profiles have been submitted and validated in Merlin and distributed within the Network by using EACI databases and central or local dissemination tools and means with the objective to generate expression of interests leading to partnership agreements. There are four types of Partnership profiles: Business offers, Business requests, Technology offers, Technology requests and Research & development requests. 8) Expression of interests received 9) Expression of interests made You have received Expressions of Interests (EoI) from foreign Network partner s clients requesting contact details or further information about your client s partnership profiles. You have disseminated external partnership profiles that have resulted in Expression of Interests (EoI) from your clients requesting contact details or further information about the foreign Network partner s partnership profiles. Profiles are disseminated via several tools and means including Merlin queries, widgets and stakeholder tools, subscription services such as newsletters, and direct contacts. Page 4 of 11

5 10) Clients in feedback related actions You have consulted EU businesses and Network clients to obtain their opinion on existing and forthcoming Community legislation, particularly in the frame of the Lead Market Initiative. Feed-back related actions typically includes contacting, informing, inviting, consulting Network clients and submission of cases to SME Feedback database, SOLVIT, or to EBTP The European Business Test Panel, or participation in other similar initiatives. 11) Clients mentored/ coached 12) Achievements/ Success cases Awaiting the final wording and content of SME Instrument and the services requested from the network in relation to Horizon 2020 and other programs. You have contributed to a good result an achievement for a client as a consequence of your Network activities. You have submitted a validated description of the achievement in Merlin (see proposed template below). An achievement is a result of a service rendered by a Network partner to a client that gives a significant and clearly demonstrable impetus to the client's competitiveness at European level, thus leading to an improvement of its economic situation 1 Regarding individual advisory services, an achievement/success case could be for example service to help clients finding possible sources of financing that led to that that the client got a financial grant and could buy new machinery. Or advice provided to a client on EU law that led to that the client complies with it, won a public procurement, apply CE mark correctly, recover a debt, etc. Or advice provided on IPR issues that led to that the client had his / her technology patented. Regarding partnering activities, achievements/success cases could include production and dissemination of partnership proposals/profiles, and organisation of brokerage events and missions, that have led to partnership agreements (business agreements, technology transfer agreements, research project proposals) If an achievement is the result of two Network services (e.g. Horizon2020 and IPR services) it is the service where an expert level of services has been provided that counts. It cannot be considered as two achievements. 13) SMEs using digital services provided by the Network You have set up digital services offering Network services, such as newsletters, business alerts and AMT, tender alerts, RSS fed, or other service provided through social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc). It is the number of subscribers, followers, fans, members, etc that counts. The number of likes, or the number of organisations or individuals that you follow does not count. Likewise, answering to an inquiry with an , subscribers of host organizations newsletters or visitors on web sites doesn't count. 1 Present definition of an Advisory Service Outcome (ASO) Page 5 of 11

6 14) Local/regional stakeholder cooperation 15) Enquiries answered from Network partners 16) Active contribution to Network activities You have met and discussed common issues with local/regional stakeholder organisations with the Network s goals and objectives in mind and agreed on that cooperation for both parts could be fruitful. These could be regional authorities, trade/sector organisations, unions, clusters, company organisations/networks, etc. It is the number of local/regional stakeholder organisations that you are cooperating with that count. 2 You have answered enquiries from Network partners looking for information on behalf of their clients. Enquiries refer to those posted on Merlin Forum or sent directly to Network partners. You have contributed to Network activities as speaker, trainer, chairman, coordinator, rapporteur, evaluator or you have attended activities to increase the performance, quality and identity of the Network. Examples are: Participate in Sector groups Participate in Working groups Participate in centralised Network trainings and induction courses Participate and/or organise decentralised training events Follow e-learning modules provided by the EACI Participation in official Network events: Annual Conference, Steering & Advisory Group (SAG) (national co-ordination, SAG meetings), Info Days, National meetings, EACI ad-hoc and contact groups. EU wide promotion campaigns and other events launched by the Commission (not including here the EU consultations) Participate in Staff exchange Participate in Mentoring scheme, or other joint consortia meetings, seminars or initiatives. Organise and participate in consortium meetings Organise internal staff trainings (Induction, train the trainers) staff trainings 2 This output would fit under output 16 and should be a separate output only if it needs to be so for political reasons. The definition could also refer to the section Regional positioning Local cooperation in the one-page document Enterprise Europe Network - thematic coverage of activities and services. Page 6 of 11

7 Proposed Achievement template in Merlin The challenge designing a web-template to make it very user-friendly for Network staff while collecting as much information as possible for data processing. Every required input should have a clear purpose of what it should be used for and should answer the question: Do we really need this? And why? The template is obviously made for reporting, but its main purpose is to collect Network achievements that could be published. A Network blogger, journalist, evaluator, investigator or similar could be seen as the main user of the achievement database to search for material in order to write an article, report, success story, etc. There should also be a system for validation of Achievements, preferably following the same system as for partnership profiles. Asking your client, how satisfied were she or he with the Network service that you provided? On a scale from 1 to 5 (1 meaning very significant impact and 5 very limited impact ) Title 2. Own reference Clear and meaningful title that can be understood by the general public Page 7 of 11

8 3. Summary (500 characters) The Summary should answer: Where (geographically)the client is from and type of client supported Client s need, question, query Network partners involved and type of service provided Results and impact 4. Clients requirements or needs Why did the client need your support? What question or query? Problem to solve? 5. The service provided by the Network What did you and your Network partners do for your client? Preferably in chronological order, e.g. from the first contact at a local event to support meditating an agreement. 6. Short term results What were the immediate results for your client as a result of your services? Did they get a financial grant? Take part in a project under Horizon2020? Could they comply with EU legislation? Did they get a CE marking? Could they patent their technology? Did they reach a partnership agreement with a foreign company? Did they submit a research project proposal? Page 8 of 11

9 7. Expected impact after one year Select type(s) Improvement of market conditions Turnover Cost savings Job creation or maintenance Business skills/quality improvement... Other expected impact Expected impact after one year in terms of turnover, jobs created, new products/services, new clients/markets, etc. A more detailed questionnaire will be sent to the client from the Network partner in one year. Please remind me to complete an impact assessment after one year 8. Quotes by the client, if any Short quote by the client expressing what he/she thought about the service provided 9. Network partners involved and contact information Contact persons and Organisation ID 10. Type of activities behind the achievement (Ctrl+) Select type(s) Local event Advisory service Brokerage event Company mission SME feedback 11. Type of advisory service provided (Ctrl+) Select type(s) Innovation support Financing Legislation Access to market Page 9 of 11

10 12. Partnership agreement signed? Yes No 13. Type of agreement reached Select type(s) Acquisition agreements Commercial agency agreements Commercial agreements with technical assistance Distribution services agreements Financing agreements Franchise agency agreements Joint ventures agreements Licence agreements Manufacturing agreements Outsourcing agreements Reciprocal production Research cooperation agreements Subcontracting Technical cooperation agreements 14. Selected key words (Same as for Profiles) Select keywords 15. Publication and confidentially Can the text or part of the text be published, e.g. for a success story? Suggestions on where it could be published Who could be interested? Personal data collection protection sentence Signature Selected information sent to client for signature Approved Not approved A user-friendly function to obtain an electronic signature from the client (e.g. as profiles are approved by clients in EasyPP) 3 Issues on publication must be adapted to each member state law till the EU regulation enters into force. Most national data protection authorities provide examples. Page 10 of 11

11 General remarks, comments and suggestions All network partners should have a minimum target of number of achievements Achievements/Success cases that involve at least two network partners MUST be ranked higher/given more weight than those that only involves one network partner There must be a clear connection between the number of achievements and the Network partners budget to ensure that partners do not carry out activities with no achievements, success or impact ensured/measured. New or widening activities and services of the network (proposed/requested by DG Enterprise or anybody else) can be relevant, but at the very same time it will for sure weaken the focus of the Network and what we are actually doing as partners and individual employees/network colleagues, especially towards creating achievements for our clients. A very wide focus can also minimize the unique selling points of the Network, which again can inflict the chances for regional/national co-funding and our position in the regional business and innovation support landscapes. The definition of activities, outputs, outcome described earlier in this document is complementing and not replacing official documents stating the Network s coverage of activities and services. The definitions should rather be seen as translations of official texts into a language that could be understood by EEN in order for them to know what is expected from them. Page 11 of 11