Research Project VILLAGE

Objectives

VILLAGE will support the pan-European initial deployment of a co-operative Customer Relationship management service for SME. In the first pilot stage VILLAGE will address co-operative SME environments, like SME associations, incubators or franchise networks. The CRM service will allow for access to and share of customer’s data and marketing, sales and customer support processes within the SME networks. VILLAGE will act as an integration environment to interface and interconnect technology provider, service suppliers and end-users what helps strengthening the participation of SMEs communities as a whole in the global e-Business economy. VILLAGE will support the interaction of the participating SMEs with their working environment (e.g. employees, customers, network management, etc.) by providing them with an adapted access to a CRM service and promoting new methods of works (in particular co-operative work). VILLAGE involves eight partners from five member states (Germany, France, Romania, Hungary and Czech Republic), thus supporting the initial deployment of the VILLAGE service in four European regions.

Activities

VILLAGE has commenced on 1st of September 2007. The project will last for 30 months. Foreseen activities include:

• Adapt the current service currently available in Germany to the target countries taking into account factors such as 1) the differences in regulatory, administrative and cultural environments and language (localisation); 2) back-office functions and the organisation and processes underlying services; and 3) resource and experience sharing.
• Consider, prepare and test deployment scenarios by finalising the trans-European “collaborative CRM service” layer and all back-office functions and processes.
• Demonstrate regional service operation and assess user acceptance involving a significant number of system integrators and end-users in real life conditions.
• Measure the economic feasibility of the service and develop a Sustainable Deployment Plan for reaching full trans-European service deployment, taking into account collaboration issues between providers.
• Organise peer review of the service and user feedback, including dissemination activities. Peer reviews will be arranged in the form of a series of workshops and discussion groups.

End-users of the service will be European SMEs. SME networks like incubators, industrial associations and franchise networks, will act as catalysts for addressing SMEs in any kind of sector. The project will result in full deployment plans for each targeted country.

Project impact

VILLAGE project homepage

www.village-project.eu

Contact for this project

Spiros Alexakis

SMEs already have the ability to exchange information and share IT resources with others as if they were in the same village-the “global SME village”. This makes it possible to realize cooperation between economic actors for common undertakings and leads among other things to common projects and sell jointly products. The market penetration of CRM at large SMEs is quickly growing but national markets are limited and networks crossing borders. In order to tackle this problem, these type of information systems require a European sized market for continual growth.

Through providing new business and market opportunities to the SMEs and reducing overheads VILLAGE stimulates the competitiveness and employment capability, focusing on core competencies and innovation potential. These benefits improve the general employment prospects all over Europe. Concerning the traditional strength of Europe, the high number of specialized SMEs can cooperate on an international level. Hosted services make it possible for companies with know-how in niche-markets and regions to adapt a performing CRM service and offer value added services regardless of the location.

Apart of this, the collected experiences will support the establishment of a "glocalisation" (a mixture of globalisation and localisation) strategy for the service. This strategy refers to the creation of products or services intended for the global market, but customized to suit the local culture.

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