nowEurope

The goal of NETIES is to help small technology businesses (SMEs) get started with Framework 6 (FP6, and part of that mission, we’re working to identify barriers to participation.

The business people I bring together at my First Tuesday events here in Budapest are well aware of European Commission funding, but have little idea how to get started. Those who have describe a steep learning curve.

One First Tuesday attendee told me he had been approached by a Greek company to take part in an EU tender. The problem, he explained, is he doesn’t know this company and the relationship is open ended. Applying for the grant is an investment of time, but the return is unclear.

Others are baffled by the language of the European Commission, which includes calls, instruments, specific support actions, networks of excellence, and acronyms such as IST, EVA, FP6 and SME. (I found a useful FP6 glossary here.)

At my December First Tuesday event, we spent a good 45 minutes discussing step by step how FP6 works. Many people simply didn’t understand why the European Commission is offering money, and what they would be expected to deliver.

I was particularly pleased to have at my event, Dorottya Pék and her colleague Barbara from Care Consulting, who make a business of helping businesses apply for these grants. Dorottya was able to explain more of the specifics of the current calls published on Cordis.

As it turns out, there’s a whole network of people and institutions here in Hungary that provide information, training and consulting to businesses wishing to take part in FP6 and I’ll introduce some of these actors in future posts to nowEurope.

The very beginnings of the IDS Scheer mark stretch back to 1984, when Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer with his colleagues from Saarland University founded a small consulting company focused on process engineering. Today it is an international company with shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a significant global partner of SAP serving circa 4,000 customers in more than 50 countries around the world.

The Czech branch office has been on the local market since 1994 (originally in partnership with COMSOFT); the complete ownership integration into the parent company was carried out in 2003. IDS Scheer ?R, s.r.o. has the ISO certification for strategic consulting for business processes and support information system solution. A significant part of the product portfolio is represented also by consulting services of SAP system, the leading system of its category on the Czech market, using the company’s own ARIS Value Engineering methodology.

The first experience with the EU projects date back to 2000-2001, when Milena Hrbá?ková was charged with management of the Software Development Department and Translation Department and she decided to take advantage of synergy from knowledge of both and accepted an offer of one of the IDS partners to participate in the first project proposal (Dromeas, see below) in order to spread activities to Europe and gain international experience.

From the beginning the company was surprised by the general settings and rather free division of workload among consortium partners than is usual in commercial projects. “However, after experience with four EU projects our viewpoint is different”, states Milena Hrbá?ková. “It would be hardly possible to specify the research plan for circa three years ahead in more details. Another great experience was work in the multicultural environment of international consortium, where various cultural influences reflected in various methods of work and communication between partners. A very positive finding was that the verbal agreements were valid”. Despite that she advises the Czech participants to specify clearly in the consortium agreement the areas of decision-making, responsibilities, project costs, as well as rights for the access to and dissemination of project results.

According to Milena Hrbá?ková the company’s benefits of the participation in projects definitely include besides the actual projects outputs building “European know-how”, gaining international contacts and information regarding European markets including the possibility to compare the level of professional knowledge with CR. Although the framework programme projects do not always lead to a development of a commercial product ready to be put on the market (the output is usually a prototype), the company constantly gains and develops professional knowledge on the level of latest technologies, which can be exerted in other projects or commercial orders – which are gained thanks to positive references of participation in the project.

IST Projects

All projects mentioned below are of the STREP type (Specific Targeted Research Project) submitted to the IST (Information Society Technologies) part of the EU 5th Framework Programme, the first two in the Health – Intelligent environment for citizen centred health management category. The stated budgets are contributed by the EU by circa a half.

The first experience with the EU research projects was DROMEAS, which objective was the monitoring of the health state and performance of a sportsman during training, especially in the rehabilitation process after a trauma. The solution is applied by the Israeli-British chain of hospitals. The budget reached 4.2 mil. EUR for 2.5 years for 10 partners from 7 countries.

Soon after DROMEAS another project was approved with participation of IDS Scheer CR – HEALTHY MARKET. It involved a web application for design of personalized nutrition plans supporting healthy diet and civilization disease prevention as obesity, atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases. Pilot projects were rolled out in Italy and Estonia. The budget reached 4.3 mil. EUR for 2.5 years or 12 partners from 7 countries.

After experience in two projects the Milena Hrbá?ková team decided for a challenge to undertake the demanding role of coordinator in the DICTATE project, submitted to the category Systems for health professionals: creating a Health knowledge info-structure starting in summer 2002. The budget reached 3.5 mil. EUR for 4 years for 6 partners. The objective was to develop a system intermediating a voice input of medical data with the help of a pocket computer, its transformation to a standard format and unambiguous interpretation to the health record of a patient.

Last year another project proposal was approved with the participation of IDS Scheer in the 6th Framework Programme, with the objective to design a system for planning surgical interventions based on the 3D model of a heart and the entire cardiovascular system of a patient for a realistic simulation. IDS as a technical partner is responsible for the functional system specification of the CARTIDIS project.

For those interested to participate in EU projects

The active participation of staff in the international R&D projects requires, according to Milena Hrbá?ková, a combination of different skills, knowledge, abilities and approaches starting with a wide overview in technologies related to the project, and openness to new solutions and team-work through a quick orientation in the imperfectly defined problem and an ability to think and formulate on various levels of abstraction as far as the active foreign language skill (especially English) and orientation in the terminology of EU projects.

It is necessary to actively follow the development of the entire project, that means frequent communication (e-mails, phone-calls, videoconferences) and frequent travelling to the management and technical meetings. Projects also require considerable financial and legal administration, often with a need of support from other parties, which have a sufficient language skill and orientation in a given issue (e.g. audit and legal services).

The essential set of skills and knowledge is usually necessary to build from more people, sometimes it is needed to find the external sources. “This means that smaller companies are handicapped for participation in projects, as it is usually harder for them to create such a work-team, respectively to allocate its work capacity only for this type of project. The tried-and-true method is to gain from the beginning experience in project as a partner only, focused only on a particular part of a project (workpackage). In further projects the company can go for a more challenging role as a “workpackage leader”, project coordinator or to try to write and submit a project on their own”“, advises Milena Hrbá?ková.

Cooperation offer

IDS Scheer CR has besides the IST projects from the Framework Programmes experience with project proposals for eTEN, eContent, CRAFT, FET Open, Interreg and Innovation programmes. The company would like to exploit its knowledge and experience gained during the involvement in the international consortiums especially as a technology partner in the area of definition of functional specifications, security, during web portal and database design and would like to reflect it in future cooperation with other international as well as local partners.

Contact
Milena Hrbá?ková
Tel. +420 543 524 630
E-mail: m.hrbackova@ids-scheer.cz
www.ids-scheer.cz

Milena Hrbá?ková is a graduate of the Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, in 2003 she received an MSc degree at the Brno International Business School. Previously she had been employed at the Brno University of Technology, Department of Computer Science and in PC-DIR as Head of the SAP R/3 Support Department. For some time she has been self-employed as an independent consultant, lecturer and translator in the field of IT. Since 1997 she has been working in IDS Scheer CR, where she was the Head of the Translation Department and later Head of the Programming Department. Since 2001 she has been responsible for European Commission projects management within the company.

In December several new calls were published at Cordis website. Let us take a closer look at some of those where our SMEs have a chance to succeed.

Totally 52 mil. EUR will be spent for Specific Targeted Research Projects (STREP) and Co-ordination Actions (CA) in the area of Citizens and Governance in a knowledge-based society. The deadline for the 2nd call proposals is 13 April 2005. Continue reading ‘New FP6 calls for SMEs’

At this year’s IST conference in the Hague it was already the tenth time when the European Prizes were awarded for innovative products in the field of Information Society Technologies – the European IST Prize. The competition supported by the European Commission is open for any organisation developing products with a high market potential and evidently applicable in industry and society. It is expected that practical application of R&D results on the market will have also a positive impact on society (employment, creation of new markets, increase of global competitiveness, etc.). Continue reading ‘IST Prize: ten years after’

Cordis published yesterday the profiles of the first FP6 projects in support and SMEs. These are listed as Integrated Projects (IPs) or Specific Targeted Research, Projects (STREPs). Collective Research projects and Economic and Technological Intelligence (ETI) actions, under the FP5, have also been extended to the FP6.

The objective of ETI actions is to use existing sources and networks in order to identify SMEs’ needs and anticipate market and technology new trends. The projects promote innovation in SMEs, compile and analyse information on scientific developments and identify and disseminate best practice. Continue reading ‘Publication by CORDIS of profiles of the first FP6 projects in support of SMEs’

The European Commission will launch disciplinary proceedings against Slovakia over inadequate implementation of EU laws in the electronic communications field, EC spokesman Martin Selmayr told the TASR news agency December 6. The Commission has found several shortcomings in the implementation of electronic communication laws in Slovakia, despite the fact that the country adopted the legislation into its national legal framework one year before joining the European Union. Similar proceedings will also be launched against other new European Union members, the European Commissioner for Information Society, Vivian Reding, confirmed. These include the Czech Republic and Estonia, which have not yet even adopted the regulatory framework, as well as Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Slovenia, which are encountering similar problems as Slovakia.

Source: The Slovak Spectator 

I’m not sure why people bother “reporting” “surveys” of – gasp – 150 people, but – in a shock finding from which we’re all reeling – it appears that SMEs in the UK expect to increase their online revenues by 25%.

Here’s Netimperative’s uncritical take on the press release – oops, I mean ‘research’.

The shock conclusion is that 100,000 SMEs may not have websites. Shouldn’t we look at this in more detail? There are good reasons for SMEs to have a web presence – whether in a directory, their own site, or otherwise. Continue reading ‘Yet another “survey” shows growth in SME web use…’

Technology platforms have been an innovation in EU research policy. They bring together all interested parties in a particular sector, or areas. These areas are chosen for their strategic importance or their potential contribution to the European Union’s goals of knowledge-based growth, competitiveness and employment. Continue reading ‘What are technology platforms? Questions and answers by The European Commission’

In order to implement the FP6’s priority research schemes, two new instruments have been put in place: Integrated Projects and Networks of Excellence. The new instruments have been designed to be applicable throughout the priority themes and to all participants and are both targeting SMEs. Continue reading ‘Integrated projects and the networks of excellence: two instruments of the Sixth Framework programme targeting SMEs’

“A new comparison between the countries in East and Central Europe shows just how well economic reforms work. The data show that those that abandoned central planning the fastest are the best off today. In many of the more successful countries, the prospect of EU membership has been a decisive factor for enacting the reforms.”

The author goes on to compare a recent EBRD report, that shows quick reformers are faring better economically, with a UN report that shows citizens of these countries are living better lives according to a Human Development Index.