RSC Essentials

Punam Khosla writes:
As part of the JISC Business and Community Engagement (BCE) programme, the SME e-Empowerment Project, managed by JISC TechDis, aims to support institutions who are helping Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with web technologies. As the next stage of this project, we are compiling a toolkit of freely available resources that institutions can use in their work with SMEs.

We know that many universities and colleges are already working with SMEs and start-ups delivering training, business support and knowledge transfer/exchange . The toolkit is designed to add value to this offer with resources that can be provided to SMEs as a part of your offer of support to them. These include:

• Tools and resources that help SMEs and start-ups make better use of web technology; these range from “getting started” information sheets , information that could underpin a training offer, to expert advice on the latest topics such as social media and cloud computing.
• Business advice, tools and services delivered online.

The resources in the toolkit represent a mix of projects from the higher and further education sector, and third party open source content. We have also included tools and resources developed by JISC Advance as part of our ongoing commitment to e-enablement in the higher and further education sectors.

For ease of use, the resources have been organised into the following themes:

• Starting a business
• Getting started with IT
• Online marketing
• Business efficiency and effectiveness
• Specialist services and information

The tools will be made available to universities and colleges through a dedicated website with suggestions for their use and institutional case studies. A series of themed guides and accompanying CDs will also be produced for use by SME’s in partnership with HE/FE institutions. These will be distributed free of charge to colleges and universities from JISC TechDis to pass on to partner SMEs.

You can help by suggesting resources that you have found useful when working with SMEs, and examples of effective practice that could be used as case studies. Please also let us know if you would be interested in user-testing the resources.

To get in touch, or if you have any queries about the project, please contact sme@techdis.ac.uk, or telephone 01904 717580.