On the 30th of November 2018 ended a 3,5 years long project that helped small and medium-sized ICT companies in Latvia, Estonia and Sweden to enter new markets. The partners of the project ICT Meta Cluster are proud that all project goals are fully reached.
ICT Meta Cluster offered the small and medium-sized ICT enterprises (SMEs) in Latvia, Estonia and Sweden to use a wide range of cluster-provided services to help preparing and starting exporting outside the EU and EFTA. The ICT Meta Cluster’s approach gave the SMEs a single point of contact when going for sales leads in new markets and looking for support through the whole value chain. By sharing the acquired knowledge of various export tools the project strengthened the industry competitiveness globally and achieved very good results.
All partners highly elevate the project success – despite the entering a new market and closing a sale is a challenging process and can take many years, the ICT Meta Cluster project reached its goal with 14 first sales (with a target of 9) with prospects to increase. The project identified 166 SMEs (120) of which 45 (30) received the support from the project. In total, 130 SMEs (30) received additional non-financial support from the project. In its export activities, the project covered essentially all regions of the world: Africa, North and South America, and the Caribbean, Asia, Middle East and Pacific, as well as parts Europe outside the EU or EFTA. A wide range of different products and services were exported – e-government and e-health solutions, smart city and green-tech solutions, finance and banking systems, offering highest quality and knowledge of Central Baltic ICT SMEs.
The main project focus was on the export support like scouting, feasibility analysis, match making, business counseling, product development and adaption, testbeds, coaching, export market analysis, export readiness services and market supporting for export. Export tools were selected and applied case-by-case based on the needs of the SME and target market specifics to achieve the most effective results of the project.
The Lead Partner of the project Torbjörn Jonsson (RISE/Fiber Optic Valley): “I’m very proud of the result, of projects partners and of course of the participating SMEs. We have reached the target in successful sales within project, at the same time we see many more sales in the pipeline, still not completed, but will be after project closure. Looking forward to work with these partners to support SME’s also in the future.”
The project was implemented by 4 partners from 3 countries: Latvia – Latvian IT Cluster (www.itbaltic.com), Estonia – Estonian ICT Cluster (www.itl.ee), Sweden – Fiber Optic Valley (www.fiberopticvalley.com) and RISE (www.ri.se).
ICT Meta Cluster is an international cross-border cooperation project, financed by the Central Baltic Programme. The aim of the project is to strengthen the industry competitiveness and export capabilities for small and medium size ICT companies in Estonia, Latvia and Sweden.
