SMEs, ICT and their importance for European competitiveness

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the European Commission affirm that the information communications technology (ICT) are an important mean to boost small and medium-sized enterprises’ activity and, thus, to enhance competitiveness of the European economy.

The 7^th WEF’s Global Information Technology Report published in cooperation with INSEAD provides an interesting study on SMEs’ state in more than 120 countries. Furthermore, in 2007-2008 edition a special chapter is devoted to the digital revolution Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises Hold the Key to European Competitiveness: How to Help Them Innovate through ICT and e-Business. This contribution of the EC stresses the need for increased efforts towards digitization and simplification of procedures, as well as for accompaniment of economic operators to allow them acquiring necessary competences and fully taking the advantage of e-commerce.

This need is pressing, especially for European SMEs, which make up a large part of Europe’s economy: there are some 23 million of them in the European Union, providing around 75 million jobs and accounting for 99 percent of all enterprises – underlines Mrs. Dana ELEFTHERIADOU, the communities’ European e-Business Support Network (eBSN) program coordinator – SMEs are a key part of European industry, not least because they contribute up to 80 percent of employment in some industrial sectors, such as textiles, construction, or furniture. SMEs are a major source of entrepreneurial skills, innovation, and creativity, and they contribute to economic and social cohesion.

Let’s recall that the Procure project has been qualified as dedicated firstly to the small and medium enterprises. We are therefore grateful for having the opportunity to contribute actively to the aims stated in the report within our experimentation. The preliminary phases and the technical integrations of local platforms being nearly achieved, we shall now do our best to repeat the success that the e-bourgogne service has met in the opinion of local economic operators.