SCC Final Conference in Brussels
The Final Conference of Small City Commerce will take place on 24th September 2010 at the Committee of the Regions in Brussels. read more
Introduction
Economic change and development over the past few decades has caused businesses to adapt, particularly those small businesses in small cities who seek to survive and prosper in an evermore competitive market. Most training programmes designed to help companies adapt to a changing economic climate have centred on the needs of the large companies but have often neglected to provide the necessary tools to help the smaller companies.
In response to this situation the Small City Commerce project has been created to identify, adapt and implement diverse and innovative solutions for the small retail sector through a business training programme.
To achieve this objective the project will analyse the needs of the small commercial companies sector in small cities and from the results develop a suitable training programme which caters to the specific needs of the sector. The training programme will focus on three key pillars addressing quality management systems, knowledge management systems and the advantages of business networks.
The training material will thus be aimed at managers, directors and employees of the small to medium sized companies operating in the services sector and located in the smaller cities. An evaluation of the training plan and course materials will be carried out to ensure quality and improvement and the final results will be transferred in each of the participating countries and across the rest of Europe.
It is hoped that one of the principal benefits of the programme will be the creation of network of SMEs in the independent retail sector to facilitate communication between the enterprises.
Led by the Vila-real Town Council the project has the support of a consortium of international partners, these include Landesinitiative Neue Kommunikationswege Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany), IDEC SA (Greece), Federación de Comercio de Vila-Real (Spain), FUNDECYT (Spain), INIMM (Romania), BCD (Turkey) and the Fundación Comunidad Valenciana-Región Europea chiefly responsible for the project awareness and dissemination campaigns at European level.
