Businessmakeover.eu powered by ENVISION opened its doors in October 2015 and hit the ground running by partnering with 17 active players in the SME community with access to approximately 15 million small businesses across Europe. This is all thanks to the participation and cooperation of UEAPME European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises which is a vast association with 80 member organisations and reaching 12 million SME members in the EU. Through the collaboration of its partners, businessmakeover.eu aims to reach out to small to medium enterprises (SMEs) across Europe in effort to raise awareness and ignite business model innovation across the European Union.
The other 16 organisations are Association of Organisations of Mediterranean Businesswomen, Inova Consultancy Ltd, Nordic Export Partners (Nexpa), The Women’s Organisation, Foundation for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), Tia Formazione, Embassy for Women Entrepreneurship, Digile Limited, Scholten Consultancy, FCEM Femmes Chefs d’Entreprises Mondiales, Austrian Economic Chamber, Confartigianato Vicenza Italy, Digital Flow, Kopenhagen Business school, Åbo Akademi and Association of Businesswomen in IZMIR.
After the October 2015 launch of businessmakeover.eu’s online beta portal, the team started posting challenges for the SME community aimed at improving and innovating business models. These challenges are open for the public and everyone is welcome to join. Participants can win prizes and learn a lot from the community.
“We are building a community of 3 million SMEs. And in 2016, we put a lot of effort in analysing new challenges the SME community is facing and we work on offering workable solutions by listening to SMEs and sharing this with others. In addition, we seek to help SMEs struggling with keeping their business afloat and creating cash flow for innovation. We can provide assistance and offer expertise from and to the community
making use of our social media and other channels,” stated ENVISION coordinator Harry Bouwman.
Some of the typical business challenges that ENVISION looks to assist include surviving, marketing, market expansion, maintaining innovation, customer satisfaction, and many more.
“Innovation in companies is happening every day. However, we would like to see all the 21 million European SMEs sit down for a day and think differently. What can I change in my everyday life to grow my revenues? The biggest potential for growth is in ordinary companies that employ at least one person. Therefore, I’d ask them to renew their business using the tools of Businessmakeover.eu” stated Gerhard Huemer, Director of Economic Policy at UEAPME.
Furthermore, the organisation looks for businesses to feature on their channels. A recent business that was highlighted was Egg Taxi, a Finnish-based company that came up with the novel idea to create a business out of delivering farm-fresh eggs to their customers. The company currently delivers a whopping 5,400 kg or 90,000 eggs per week around Finland. Learn more about Egg Taxi on their website.
“ENVISION is always looking for examples on how Business Model innovation increase performance to show on our channels to SMEs. We aim to publish many examples and stories to inspire and educate the SME community,” said ENVISION coordinator Harry Bouwman.
What is ENVISION?
ENVISION is a European-wide project that aims to empower small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) through its inclusive and interactive online platforms such as businessmakeover.eu. It gathers 9 partners and tens of umbrella organizations having direct access to SMEs. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 645791.
Businessmakeover.eu is an engaging online portal and platform for the SME community to come together and participate in challenges, learn whilst garnering inspiration for business model innovation across Europe.
Contact Information
Twitter: @InnovateBM
Facebook.com/InnovateBusinessModels/
Portal: Businessmakeover.eu
Project Website: Envisionproject.eu