Associations need to change their traditional role, going away from being only lobbying organizations, to become providers of innovative services to the SMEs they are serving.
SMEs are more and more asking for tangible benefits from their associations otherwise they tend to leave the associations.
They need easy and simple instruments, available in their own language, to help them complying with the mandatory regulations and to assist them in the path to reach the voluntary certifications.

To discuss this primary issue please welcome…

- Mrs. Caterina Berbenni-Rehm, CEO PROMIS @ Service Sarl in Luxembourg
- Mr. Andrea Benassi, Secretary General UEAPME
- Mr. Bernd Becker, Chairman EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e.V. and Vice President EuroCloud Europe

Question 1 to Mrs. Berbenni-Rehm:

We have already mentioned the specific role of associations in this context: You are the initiator of PROMIS®. What is the designated role of PROMIS in terms of adapting European associations to more and more sensitize SMEs to make consistent use of adequate tools, funds etc.?

During the last years I have learnt 2 lessons:

• While from one side SMEs are the backbone of Europe’s economy, from the other side they are very heterogeneous, dispersed and not easy to be reached;
• The experience confirms how important it is for associations and Chambers of Commerce to take over a CATALYST role in becoming providers of structured information, as well as pre-tailored services. The role of associations, in addition to lobbying, should become more and more the one of INNOVATORS which means “tutor, mentor, and assistant” to the SME members they want to serve.

To do this, Associations need to have at hand comprehensive ICT solutions, encompassing all the tools which are needed:

(i) to be compliant to legal and other requirements,
(ii) to structure knowledge and dedicated services,
(iii) to work interactively online with the SMEs,
(iv) to build professional communities.
This is exactly the cockpit platform we have developed in the last years with the support of the European Commission. For those who might not yet know, PROMIS® is a software-as-a-service solution, which helps small organisations to deal with a complex regulatory environment, to structure processes and data in a systematic way, and to achieve de-facto compliance with legal requirements and the major international Standards for H&S, Quality and Environmental management, as well as ICT Security, Education and CSR.

Follow-up question 2 to Mrs. Berbenni-Rehm:

Let’s figure out the aspect of Community Building: A current project of yours is called ‘Connecting good People into better Teams for mutual Benefit’. What is this project all about?

Community Building for me is all about how to build up real and sustainable professional collaborations and alliances:
“real” because they bring tangible results and
“sustainable” because they are built upon mutual benefits.
Community Building in PROMIS, is also dealing with “Communities of Knowledge” which, among others, means to structure experience in a pyramid and share it among peers (associations and experts) or sell it to clients.

Question 3 to Mrs. Berbenni-Rehm:

Software as a Service, Cloud Computing etc.: What are the effects of future-oriented technologies on business management, especially in terms of compliance and providing free capacities in these companies?

The effects of technologies on business management in SMEs… in my opinion they are of paramount importance and I can summarise them in 4 points:
To save money, getting rid of hardware on-site
To find the answers to questions ‘at a finger tip’
To save time, being professionally served & advised directly online
To achieve evidence-based compliance to legal & other requirements, all this in one place.

Last Statement

In world which is getting smaller, faster and multiethnic also at local level, Multilingualism becomes a very important “enabler” at least for the next 50-75 years.
Together with UEAPME we are working in PROMISLingua, a European project dealing with machine translation and related technologies; multilingualism to support integrated compliance for small organisations and their associations.

CEBIT 2012, 8/3/2012

Too see the video of the interview click here.

„European SMEs have to consider themselves innovation drivers! “

Answers from Caterina Berbenni-Rehm:

Q1: Why may the simple and manageable access and processing of complex information be business critical factors for SMEs nowadays and in the future?

The mission statement of my company PROMIS@Service is

“To simplify complexity and make simplicity effective”

In 5 words we have here a full program which shows that our society (I mean here business and society at large) is in urgent need to find simple structures and rules to manage and face an ever increasing and non structured information flow.

European SMEs are known for being heterogeneous, disperse and not easy to be reached. For such SMEs to have ICT instruments that help them to find the answer to their questions ‘at a finger tip’ is crucial because this supports them achieving:

• Evidence-based compliance to legal requirements
  because this decreases the managers’ responsibility and risks;
• Transparency and order throughout the organization
  thanks to the systematic structure of company processes and data;
• To save time and money
  because they are supported online by experts and consultants during their daily work
• Increased effectiveness and efficiency
  Proven return on investment

(Blue collars do no longer need to know legislation or the meaning of integrated management to do their daily job while complying with the requirements and Consultants have a new way of working which brings them an enormous economy of scale.)

With the support of the European Commission, we have developed the PROMIS^® knowledge management and integrated management platform. A Cloud / SaaS which helps micro- and midsize organisations to:

• find the answers to their questions ‘at a finger tip’
• get rid of hardware on-site
• be professionally served and advised directly online

However, we have a big job ahead of us: to go into a multilingual European market.

Q2: With special reference to increasing regulatory requirements: Why is it possible to make an active effort in corporate governance and the creation of space for all parties involved by means of future-oriented technologies?

Regulatory requirements, Compliance, financial regulations, CSR are a rule of the game for corporates. A fortnight ago Daimler Corporation extended the Board of Management by a new board member with the only responsibility for Compliance and Governance.

Corporates have structures and resources for it; we as SMEs are pressured by requirements with minimum structures and without resources.

For me the key is:

Technology is an instrument at the service of humans; it should not be seen as the end but as a means to reach a goal.

Having said that, technology is the most powerful instrument to bring different parties together -in a synergetic collaboration- which otherwise would hardly be able to speak with each other.

During the last 14 years of work with and for SMEs I learned that there are:

• Institutions, who have developed a wealth of content but have difficulties to reach the SMEs e.g. universities, research institutes and public insurances;

• Associations and Chambers of Commerce, who have a direct contact to their SME members and need to become the providers of knowledge intensive services to their SME members, thus achieving new innovation themselves.

I am deeply convinced that here the alliance among these parties, supported by an ICT multilingual instrument like PROMIS^® will bring a tangible and measurable difference to all partied involved, and above all to the SMEs we want to serve.