In summary, the work of the tow project years encompassed all elements needed for a comprehensive coaching system: the organizational frame of the coaching scheme, the setting up and fine-tuning of the IT platform with its various elements as the backbone for its realization, the nurturing of a knowledge sharing community of coaches, the broader communication to the internal stakeholders (coaches, KAMs) as well as external stakeholders (particularly regions), accompanying research studies digesting the evidence provided along qualitative and quantitative approaches.
All this work was performed in intense interaction with all stakeholders, i.e. the different EASME units, the Commission's representative from DG R&I, the EEN KAM coordinators and the KAMs (Key account managers) as well as the EASME business coaches. Several loops of specification and validation were conducted with the user groups. Under an enormous time pressure (largely due to an administratively delayed project start) the work was achieved in high speed, job descriptions were defined and agreed, recruitment schemes put in place, a methodological basics established in a series of handbooks, and finally the case tracker platform released in March 2015. Following this early phase the software has been further developed and fine-tuned in response to actual needs of the managing EASME unit as well as KAMs and coaches. After dedicated training the full running system was handed over to EASME in June 2016 while efforts now shifted to develop the knowledge dimension of the active coach community which by then was numbering around 200 coaches. During all the project time, huge investments were done into the competence development of the KAMs and the coaches in a series of small scale coach induction meetings as well as large scale KAM and Coach-KAM training events.
Today, over 2000 coaching activities delivered by about 600 coaches across 80 European regions have gone through the pipeline of the joint workflow between EASME, EEN/KAM and coach. Over 450 of these can be considered "success stories" and every day (sometimes enthusiastic) feedback is coming in from the SME beneficiaries.
