The Key Account Management for the SME Instrument beneficiaries was a very successful service within our portfolio. The innovation potential of these small or medium-sized enterprises is indisputable and mentoring them provided a comprehensive introspection into their operation. Most of them struggle with lack of staff, but employing more people would endanger the profitable operation of the company itself, which usually results in employees having multiple tasks at the same time. Other crucial challenge is the access-to-finance for these SMEs. The use of business coaches helped them to focus their existing resources and exploit them successfully. The global objective of the services delivered under this project was to effectively contribute to the innovation-driven competitiveness and sustainable growth of the European economy via improving the innovation management processes of SMEs enabling them to get their products, services successfully on the market. The SMEs were accompanied through the SME Instrument projects and will have constant follow-up from the experts of Enterprise Europe Network. We worked or still work together with 32 Phase1 beneficiaries and 16 Phase2 beneficiaries in Hungary. Unfortunately there is no considerable increase in the number of cases compared to the previous project period.
The previous project phase in 2015-2016 was closed down with 21 finished and 6 ongoing Phase1 cases and 1 closed and 11 ongoing Phase2 cases within the Key Account Management. The number of beneficiaries of Hungary is stabile; HCE closes the project period of 2017-2018 with 17 closed and 15 ongoing Phase1 and 8 closed and 8 ongoing Phase2 cases.
The Hungarian consortium aims to further increase these numbers. The EEN consultants disseminate the results every chance they have, during giving presentations, participating on workshops, or even during one-to-one consultations with new clients.
For an organisation, most importantly for SMEs, innovation means both risks and opportunities. The risks are obvious - the innovation may fail and the organisation's investment spent on it could be easily wasted. Measurement of the project impact has been and will be done with constant follow-up via email and telephone. According to the information received from our clients we could summarise the impact of the service packages, i.e.: providing management with the information required to support a successful innovation process; motivating all employees to embrace innovation broadly and handle it as a priority, because they support the overall contribution to the organisation and its customers. As an outcome of the service they cannot only identify “what” happened, but more importantly “why”, and which dimensions need more attention, improvement, and minor, or extreme change. This has direct impact on the decision-making process as well.
Within Enhancing Innovation Management Capacity work package, the innovation experts of the Hungarian consortium assessed a total of 70 SMEs, which is 28 cases higher than the number reached in the previous project period.
