CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.
Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .
Deliverables
The ESPLANADE website is a portal that allows access to the ESPLANADE toolset. This toolset comprises the business planning tool, scenario planning tool and data searching tools. These are described as individual results.
The website offers a range of information and access to customised portals for the industry sectors which include: pharmaceuticals ("orphan drugs"), biotechnology (specifically applied to medicine and food production), textiles, waste and water treatment, industrial automation and robotics and renewable energy.
The website and case studies from the tools are available in several European languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish).
Description:
The ESPLANADE scenario planning tool provides users with step by step guides to explore key trends and uncertainties in their business environments and develop multiple future scenarios for use in strategy development. The scenarios can be used to test existing strategy options, develop new strategies or to simply explore key issues or uncertainties in business environments in a structured way. The tool is based on best-practice scenario planning.
It provides advice to SME users on who should comprise their scenario / strategy development team, guidance on how strategy sessions should be conducted and instructions on how to use the tool through the various steps. Case studies are available for each of the 6 industry sectors to view so they can obtain an idea of what results / output they can expect. A scenario planning report is automatically generated based on their work on the tool and can be customised and edited.
The tool helps the user set the scope of the scenario planning exercise, identify trends and uncertainties in a structured way and assess the key drivers or 'axes of uncertainty' on which the scenario foundations will be built. The scenarios are then characterised and detailed, drawing on the trends identified by the SMEs. SMEs can use the ESPLANADE data search tool to find sector specific information on these trends to use in the scenario planning tool.
The business plan guide is an on-line tool that allows the users to develop a business plan specific to their business and sartorial needs. It is targeted to the project manager in charge of defining a new project or strategy. It is envisioned that this project manager is the director of the firm but it can also be a commercial or technical business manager in charge of proposing a new development for the SME.
The model of business plan proposes a list of questions that the user will have to ask its Scenario Planning working group in order to define its strategy. Each section will be fully explained with reference to its applicability and relevance.
Thus, this document will help the working group identify the various issues it must think about:
- The identified success factors of the company;
- The choice of its strategy options;
- The formalisation of the strategy or project.
Additionally the business plan model will help the secretary of the Scenario Planning session to summarise the results of the session. It will also help him to define more precisely the project/strategy that has been defined or chosen during the Scenario Planning session.
The data search tool offers users the possibility to reduce the effort spent in processing information and facilitates access to sector-specific data.
It is a simple, user-friendly data searching tool for SMEs, primarily for external data searching with a powerful search function.
The tool offers the ability to set profiles for sector specific data sources and rationalise the records returned to reduce "information overload". It offers regular "feeds" of information, based on personalised, user search profiles. The search tool uses intelligent "agents" to find, filter and deliver information that matches these individual user profiles. These "agents" act as "bespoke filters" to obtain smaller quantities of relevant and valuable information for users to read.
The personalised search profile can be set up to search automatically at a user-defined frequency (i.e. every day, every week etc) to identify any new information.
A document summarisation functionality is built-in to the tool, providing a summary of any document to give the reader a quick impression of its content and reduce information processing time.
The tool handles all popular file formats and can sort search results based on the following characteristics: relevance, date, keyword count, links in / out and web page title.
The tool will also remove any duplicate pages that the search has found, which reduces the total volume of records returned and saves information processing time.
This result is a series of papers and reports that introduces the concept, develops understanding and aids the implementation of scenario planning. The results are primarily aimed at the end users of ESPLANADE as they will help develop and broaden the understanding of scenario planning and increase the benefits they receive from the on-line tool. A description of each of the papers is outlined below:
Strategy Development Approaches Report - this discusses the wider context of business strategy development methodologies. It lists the different approaches and methodologies that can be used to develop a company's strategy and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each approach in the context of their applicability by SMEs.
Scenario Planning Paper - this discusses the use of scenario planning techniques, particularly by SMEs. It outlines the benefits of these techniques in terms of strategy development and indicates why they are valid approaches for SMEs to use.
Data Searching Paper - this discusses the issues associated with SMEs and data searching activities. It examines why SMEs need to conduct data searching and outlines the benefits of such activity.
Scenario Planning "how-to" paper - this provides a step by step description of the general scenario planning process. The focus is aimed at SMEs and provides insight into the process.
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