ICT

To most SMEs ICT sounds like another acronym with no real meaning, but when it is explained that ICT standards for Information & Communication Technology the reaction moves from "What is it?" to "We are not involved in this business". It is largely true that SMEs manufacturing telecommunication products are relatively rare, even rarer, if none, are the ones in operating systems. But when we consider the ones involved in the internet or e-Business we find already many more interested. A large number of SMEs are using a switchboard, and all of them use telecommunication products and services like phones and GSM. In the modern society all these mediums fall under ICT. Let's do a bit of telecommunication history: GSM were first developed in USA to answer to the Craft demand.

Being a well informed user of ICT allows aiming for better market visibility and better level of services, at a lower cost. To achieve that is very much related to standards: Trust and safety, Interoperability, defined procedures to use the Internet for electronic commerce, etc. They must follow strict rules to make the operations safe and easy to use. Standardisation is not only relevant to producers, but very much so to users. SMEs are very important users and the market surveys as done by NORMAPME, the European Commission and the German Ministry of Commerce clearly outline the growing importance of this sector. Internet use by SMEs is in many countries now well over 50% and growing to 95% like in the Nordic countries. eProcurement is used by 20% of the European companies in the last eBusiness survey. The effects of the Internet bubble are gone and growth is coming back. Initiatives like the eEurope program show the interest to grow fast. (See Commission website: http://europa.eu.int/comm/enterprise/ict/index.htm )

NORMAPME's presence in the European Commission's consultative bodies, in ICTSB, in CEN and ETSI allows full coverage of ICT issues as far as SMEs are concerned as users. Our activities can be divided in 2 main sectors:

• eBusiness
• Telecommunications

E-Business solutions are the easiest drivers for productivity improvement and the best way to achieve the Lisbon growth agenda for SMEs. They are gradually gaining ground in the everyday operation of SMEs and are becoming a necessity while dealing with large customers. Moreover, governments in many countries actively stimulate their small enterprises to use e-Government and e-Procurement tools. Whether imposed by market pressure or voluntarily selected by SMEs to improve their competitiveness, the move to use eBusiness in SMEs has started and it is a matter of time that it will affect virtually all SMEs.

Good standards allow SMEs to use this new business medium with confidence. It is thus in those countries that through the legislation and applied standards created a secure and user-friendly environment where the highest uptake of ICT and e-Business in SMEs is foreseen. However, over the past years, the SMEs have not participated very actively in the standardisation in this field. Consequently, most of the European standards were made by large enterprises and governments. So far only NORMAPME has been actively trying to assure that the SME dimension is also considered in standardisation. As at present most of the standards are in the advanced stage of development, NORMAPME will have to spend an increasing amount of time and resources to follow this area in upcoming years.

E-Invoicing Task Force

This group conveys the opinions of the major industry stakeholders in order to provide advice to the Commission on harmonization of national e-Invoicing schemes. NORMAPME represented by Sebastiano Toffaletti has followed the work of this Task Force making sure that general requirements on the future e-Invoicing standard take into account SMEs' needs, such as cost effectiveness.

ICT Task Force

The ICT Task Force advises the European Commission on the main policy issues in ICT and gives recommendations on how to stimulate the growth of the production and use of ICT in Europe. Mr. Müller, NORMAPME President, was one of the 23 distinguished Industry Stakeholder members. In addition, NORMAPME participated in 5 of the 6 WGs that accomplished the preparatory work. As a result significant parts of all the individual WG reports and of the final summary report sent to the Parliament were devoted to SMEs. The priority recommendation was to improve the uptake of ICT by SMEs. In addition, three out of the main six recommendations were directly related to standardization.

 PIN-SME

In 2007 UEAPME and NORMAPME founded a new "Pan-European ICT & eBusiness Network for SMEs" called shortly PIN-SME that aims to provoke a step change in the use of eBusiness in the daily operation of SMEs.

The Pan-European Network decided to support two categories of SMEs:

PIN-SME has been also actively supporting the ICT Task Force work.

 Apart from the above mentioned work, there are some other areas that are becoming more and more important for SMEs. One of such key issues is the interoperability between systems. The so-called scalability factor, which allows SME- computer systems an open dialogue with large systems, is crucial to solve many issues. Therefore, more presence of SME representatives and more visibility are necessary in this area.

In addition, as large enterprises in the automotive, ICT, and supermarket chains are going to full electronic mode of working, their subcontractors are obliged to do the same. This implies much greater use of RFID as the way to ensure full traceability along the supply chain. SMEs have been absent from the works on development of RFID, but currently some of NORMAPME members have expressed a growing interest to work in this area. Thus, NORMAPME shall also follow this domain more closely.

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Telecommunications – Our principal activities in the Telecommunication sector are in ETSI. We maintained our activities within ETSI in different bodies: the General Assembly, the Board and the User Group (UG), and expanded towards other strategic and technical bodies: IMPACT (promotional activity group) and HF (Human factor).

On the Board and in the General assembly we succeeded influencing the ETSI business plan and strategy in supporting and being more open towards users and SMEs. The HLRG (High Level Revision Group) report was approved at the April 2004 ETSI General Assembly and it was decided to form an implementation group (HLRG IG). A staff member of NORMAPME was nominated group leader for user issues. All proposals of the user issue group which affect ETSI directives were adopted during the November 2005 ETSI General Assembly. Others will need to be implemented by the relevant groups.

Normapme made two surveys, on SME needs as IT users and on the level of satisfaction of ETSI user members. With unanimous approval, ETSI User Group endorsed them as ETSI Special Reports during the November 2005 UG meeting.

The GSC*10 user workshop took place in August 2005. The ETSI User Group chairman, a NORMAPME employee, chaired one roundtable and gave two presentations. The User Group is strongly involved in the preparation of this workshop. She was asked to be involved in the GSC 11 preparation. GSC 11 took place in Chicago in May 2006.
*GSC stands for Global Standards Collaboration

The UG sent a liaison to IMPACT to consider some pilot seminars in order to increase user participation in ETSI work, especially as far as SMEs as users are concerned. This project has been approved and took place in the framework of the ETSI road show initiative.

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