EBIZ4ALL - Small companies can take advantage of the e-business concept too!

Innovation is included in the international consortium that works on the project EBIZ4ALL. This project has the objective of developing a web-based multilingual, multipurpose (B2B/B2G) e-business client. The international consortium consists of partners from: Austria, Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia. Theproject is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). It has been selected as the project of the month (January 2011) by AIC, the consultants organization affiliated with the Austrian Chamber of Commerce

The objective of the project is to develop an innovative, state-of-the art and cost-effective international E-Business solution that will enable companies to easily participate in electronic procurement and billing.

The main advantages of E-Business are: cost reduction, more efficient business processes and closer cooperation of companies. When talking about the e-business we can say that large companies can connect alltheir suppliers electronically (currently they may connect only those with high volumes), and can easily benefit from the advantages;but this is not the case with SMEs. While the ERP systems of large suppliers are often linked to the customer’s ERP system, small suppliers are mostly not linked. The reasons may be the costs or the lack of an appropriate ERP system on the supplier’s side.This project aims to address these issues – to make it possible for the smaller suppliers to participate in the European wide exchange of electronic business documentswith small investment,and enlarge their customer base. Thus we can achieve reduction of process costs for the procurement cycle up to 60 % and reduction of cycle time (procure-to-pay) up to 80 %.

For this project Innovation provides the necessary know-how about the specific situation of the Southern European Countries in this area; performs the requirements analysis; the local market analysis and works on the localization of the software (translation of views, manual, help) and we will also initiate and support follow-up projects (if possible).

The project has already produced a first version of the software, a multilingual consulting model and most of the technical documentation. Its results have already attracted interest from a number ofcompanies in South-Eastern Europe.

It will be completed in June 2011 and enable Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to increasingly take part in electronic business.Consequently the economic relations between Austria and South-Eastern Europe shall be strengthened.