DigiBEST

Programme Interreg Europe

Project duration from 1 Aug 2019 to 31 Jul 2023

Funding  The project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Norwegian National Fund under the INTERREG EUROPE programme. Total project funding - EUR 1 579 342.00 (ERDF - EUR 1 138 347.20; Norwegian funding - EUR 120 055.00).

Project goal

DigiBEST will support European companies, in particular SMEs to increase their competitiveness by improving the quality of their performance through digital transformation.

Project summary

Digital transformation is a part of technological change that requires ongoing process of digitalisation. It has significant implications, particularly for improving business competitiveness and employment.

European businesses can build their strengths on advanced digital technologies and seize the range of opportunities that technologies such as the Internet of Things, Big Data, advanced manufacturing, robotics, 3D printing, blockchain technologies and artificial intelligence offer. Clearly, in a near future the digital transformation will foster economic growth and will become a key driver for employment.

One of the main problems is that many SMEs are not aware of the necessity to adapt to this huge ongoing process of digitatlisation and aren’t aware of existing possibilities. There seems to be a gap  between the willingness to use highly digitalized product in private versus professional life. It is therefore crucial to inform SMEs about possible benefits, which digitalization can bring and about the impact to almost all areas of a company that falling behind this process may bring.

The project’s role is to help European companies, especially SMEs, to acknowledge existing opportunities and possibilities for exploiting them to achieve tangible results, as well as to increase their competitiveness, which will result in improved overall economic development and employment.

Partners
The project involves a total of 7 partners from 6 countries/regions (Austria, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Portugal and Spain) and its lead partner is the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development.

Project objectives

To support European businesses, especially SMEs, to recognise the opportunities already offered in order to achieve tangible results and to increase their competitiveness, which will improve overall economic development and employment.

The project plans activities and expected results:

• An assessment of the current situation in each partner country will be carried out (business environment interviews, assessment of barriers and solutions to digitalisation of business, SWOT analysis, etc.).
• Training, exchange and expert assessment visits, stakeholder working groups, discussion forums are planned within the project to explore and raise awareness of the current situation and the challenges and needs of the digital transformation of SMEs, as well as policy instruments for improvement.
• Develop a self-assessment tool on the digitalisation of the business environment - an assessment questionnaire to identify the weaknesses of enterprises and the reasons why they do not use ICT tools.
• The development of "Roadmaps" for the digitisation of enterprises, which will serve as a basis for the development of an action plan for each partner country.
• Based on the recommendations and the information gathered, each partner country is expected to produce an action plan and a video reel at the end of the project, which will reflect the activities planned in the action plans.

More information:

Homepage:https://www.interregeurope.eu/digibest/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/interregdigibest/

For other information about the project contact: Endija Latvena, LU ESASAC, endija.latvena@lu.lv