ict smes selection protocol for training and mentoring program€¦ · smes not established or...

Deliverable D.4.1

ICT SMEs selection protocol for training and mentoring program

Author : FCTA Deliverable : 4.1 1

Deliverable 4.1

ICT SMEs selection protocol for training and

mentoring program

Project acronym: TRACK

Project title: Tracking opportunities to develop and strengthen data

collection and big data in agri-chain to increase competitivity

of SMEs - TRACK

Funding Scheme: COS-CLUSTPARTN-2017-3-02

Grant Agreement number: 822067

Coordinator: Nicolas Fégeant

Project was co-funded by the European Union’s COSME Programme.

Start date of the project: October, 1st, 2018

Project duration: 24 months

Work package: 4 – ICT SME’s training and mentoring (Task

4.1)

Lead beneficiary for this deliverable: Fundación Corporación Tecnológica de

Andalucía

Authors: Rocío de la Rosa

Delivery Date from Annex I (Part A): Month 5 – February, 28th 2019

Delivery Date :

Dissemination level

PU Public

CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services) X

CI Classified

Disclaimer: The content of this report represents the views of the author only and is his/her sole responsibility; it cannot be

considered to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

(EASME) or any other body of the European Union. The European Commission and the Agency do not accept any responsibility

for use that may be made of the information it contains.

Deliverable D.4.1



The TRACK Consortium

N° Beneficiary name Beneficiary

short name Country

1 VEGEPOLYS VEGEPOLYS France

2 ASOCIATIA CLUSTERUL AGRO-FOOD-IND NAPOCA ATC Romania

3 CLUST-ER AGROALIMENTARE Clust-ER Italy

4 FUNDACION CORPORACION TECNOLOGIA DE ANDALUCIA FCTA Spain

5 STICHTING GREENPORT WESTLAND OOSTLAND GPWH Netherlands

Contributors/peer-review

Name Institution

Felix ARION ATC

Emeline DESFOSSEZ VEGEPOLYS

Nicolas FEGEANT VEGEPOLYS

Deliverable D.4.1



Contents

1. Aim of the document ............................................................................................................................ 4

2. Protocol selection methodology .......................................................................................................... 4

a. Call of Interest .................................................................................................................................. 4

b. TRACK Partners pre-identify ICT promising SMEs ............................................................................ 5

c. TRACK disseminate and communicate Call for interest ................................................................... 5

d. Business plan submission ................................................................................................................. 6

e. Eligibility check ................................................................................................................................. 6

f. Individual evaluation ........................................................................................................................ 6

g. Steering Committee .......................................................................................................................... 7

h. Finalisation ........................................................................................................................................ 7

3. Requirements ....................................................................................................................................... 7

4. Links with other WP and tasks. ............................................................................................................ 8

Deliverable D.4.1



1. Aim of the document WP4 aims at boosting farmers and agrifood industries traceability and big data technologies uptake,

through implementation of ICT promising SMEs training and mentoring customized program. This

program will be designed and set up by TRACK’s partners and business experts. It will help to ICT promising

SMEs to acquire specific knowledge of the commercial practise and technology needs of firms of the

agrifood sector.

The technical content of this training program is fed by Consortium expertise/knowledge, and good

practises collected from agrifood sector and ICT experimented companies. A questionnaire will be

designed and implemented between TRACK’s partners to collect best practices and success cases of

technology uptake in agrifood sector. Each partner will organize one regional workshop about how to

approach agrifood sector from ICT SMEs. Agrifood and ICT companies, agritech providers, innovation

advisors, farmers, etc. are expected to attend workshop. Results of questionnaires and workshop will be

analysed in order to build technical content of the training programme that will be described in D4.3. with

estimate delivered date 30th of September 2019. Also, this selected SMEs will receive support to

internationalize their agrifood business plan. This action is described in Task 4.3 “Internationalization

mentoring” that it will be lead by ATC.

FCTA has created a selection procedure for detecting the SMEs needs and identifying the most potential

ICT promising SMEs for participating in TRACK project. The business plan will be required for each SMEs

in order to identify its specific needs to approach agrifood market and to improve its competitiveness.

FCTA has prepared the business plan template and evaluation requirements which are described in D4.2.

Candidates from each country are expected, and the evaluation of each SME will be done by partners

from corresponding country, according to consensual assessment criteria. SMEs will be selected from M6

until M12 in a continuous way, up to reach 10 selected SMEs.

The first version of this document was shared to all partners 17th of February 2019 and commented in the

online meeting 21th of February 2019. This deliverable relates to Task 4.1 “Identification of promising ICT

SMEs” and Task 4.2 “Training”.

2. Protocol selection methodology

a. Call of Interest Before dissemination, a common email pitch (same message) will be designed with the key ideas and

objectives of the TRACK project, including the benefits that SMEs can expect from this selection (training,

1 Call of Interest

1.1. Preparation of the common email (deadline 15/03/19)

1.2. Send pitch to all partners for feedback (deadline 15/03/19)

1.3. Online Meeting (day 21/21/03/19)

1.4. Pitch final version. Send to all partners for dissemination (deadline 31/03/19)

2 TRACK Partners pre-identify ICT promising SMEs (deadline 31/03/19)

3 TRACK disseminate and communicate Call for interest

4 Business plan submission

5 Eligibility check

6 Individual evaluation

7 Steering Committee

8 Finalisation

M12M6 M7 M8 M9 M10 M11

Deliverable D.4.1



mentoring, webinars, missions…) avoiding any kind of money expectations. It will be discussing and

approving for all TRACK partners in the next online meeting.

Action starts: 1st of March 2019.

Deadline for preparing the common email and send to all partners for feedback: 15th of March 2019.

Next online meeting for feedback: 21th of March 2019.

Pitch final version: 31th of March 2019.

This action will take one month during the M6.

b. TRACK Partners pre-identify ICT promising SMEs Due to the most important dissemination activity will carry on during only one month before business

plan submission, the propose of this pre-identification is to join efforts preparing a preliminary list of

organisms and SMEs which to send the Call of Interest.

This action will take place in parallel with the preparation of Call for Interest. Each TRACK partner will

identify all the ICT promising SMEs they can in their cluster or ecosystem that could be potential

candidates to participate in TRACK project.

This selection is open to two types of SMEs:

ICT SMEs offering solutions of at least TRL 4 to 5 with no previous experience of collaborating or selling to the agrifood sector;

ICT SMEs offering solutions of at least TRL 4 to 5 with previous experience of dealing with the agrifood sector and with an interest to gain further knowledge of the sector.

For more detail of the companies targets, see the next section.

Action starts: 1st of March 2019.

Action ends: 31th of March 2019.

This action will take one month during the M6.

c. TRACK disseminate and communicate Call for interest The dissemination of TRACK Call for interest will take place in different platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn,

Facebook, corporative websites of each TRACK’s partner and TRACK official website. Also, it could take

advantage the different events organized WP2 in Task 2.1 and WP3 in Task 3.2 interesting for

mutualisation of task forces (i.e. VIBE, S3P, ERIAFF, Fair, workshops, etc) and TRACK’s webinars.

It will be created a common excel by CTA called Participants List. With this excel each TRACK partner could

register all the companies and can have control of the state of each company during the entire selection

process.

The target SMEs’ profiles must comply the following requirements:

SMEs in order to EU regulation.

Product/service IT expert.

Deliverable D.4.1



SMEs not established or partially established in the agrifood sector.

SMEs technologies with at least TRL 4 - 5 to have experimentation. It is probable that SMEs in

WP4 will be involved in pilot sites in WP3.

Action starts: 1st of April 2019.

Action ends with the Launching on the Call of Interest: 30 of April 2019.

This action will take one month during M7.

d. Business plan submission Each TRACK partner allocated in the same country of the ICT promising SMEs, will send the business plan

template designed in D4.2 to the SMEs and will be in charge to assess them during the selection process.

The proposal of this action is to obtain the necessary information in order to evaluate the compliance with

the requirements for participation in the training programme.

Action starts: 1st of May 2019.

Action ends with the close of Call: 30th of June 2019.

This action will take two months during M8-M9.

e. Eligibility check Eligibility check will be done by the allocated national TRACK partner following requirements described

below:

Business plan submitted in due time.

Business plan submitted in English.

Status of participant (participant is an SMEs and fulfils with SME’s European Commission

definition).

Geographical location of applicant (located in one of the TRACK partners).

The Participant List will be update with the companies that passed the eligibility check for evaluation.

Action starts: 1st of July 2019.

Action ends: 15th of July 2019.

This action will take fifteen days during M10.

f. Individual evaluation The business plan will be evaluated following the criteria defined in the D4.2. ICT SMEs business plan

assessment methodology. For ensuring equity and fair evaluation, it will be carried out by 2 experts from

TRACK consortium of different country from the country of the applicant (i.e. VG candidates evaluated by

GPWH and CTA). Before individual evaluation, each company will send the Participant List to the TRACK

partner in charge of making the distribution of the companies for each TRACK evaluator.

After individual evaluation, each of those 2 experts will be charge of scoring the business plan. They could

have to deliver an individual evaluation report defined in D4.2, within a maximum period of 8 weeks after

the eligibility checking. The average of those 2 individual scores, will be the final score of the proposal.

Deliverable D.4.1



Steering committee have the final reviewing session and ranking, where it will be done the total validation

score of each proposal and the elaboration of the proposal Ranking List.

In case of tied business plans, product and technology score prevails. In case of lack consensus in evaluation scores, the evaluation committee will take advice TRACK advisory group members. In the case of there are a different of 3 points or more in a one business plan evaluated for different evaluators, it will be reviewed in the steering committee.

Action starts: 15th of July 2019.

Action ends: 15th of September 2019.

This action will take two months during M10-M11-12.

g. Steering Committee The steering committee will take place at the end of Task 4.1 in M12, it could be in TRACK/Cluster Meeting

“Data growing for agri-food”, September 19/20/2019, Cluj, Romania (pending to confirming).

The steering committee will be led by the TRACK consortium coordinator. Each TRACK partner must

ensure that they choose two companies. In case this is not possible, the criteria will be focused on ranking

the best evaluation marks (best promising SMEs).

Action starts: 19th of September 2019.


This action will take two days during M12.

h. Finalisation It will prepare the final Ranked List. Each TRACK partner allocated will inform each applicant individually

with their resolution. More activities for announcing the general results, without giving personal details,

will be discussed at the end of the Task 4.1 (i.e. TRACK event, webinar).

Action starts: 21th of September 2019.


This action will take eleven days during M12.

3. Requirements - Business plan submitted in due time and with comprehensive content to demonstrate SME

prospective into agrofood sector.

- Business plan submitted in English to each allocated TRACK partner.

- Status of the company will be an SME and comply with SME’s European Commission definition.

- Company geographical located in one of the TRACK partners countries.

- Acceptance of the specific requirements of the project.

Deliverable D.4.1



4. Links with other WP and tasks. Results from WP2 (Strategy Work Package) and WP3, Task 3.2 (trans-cluster matchmaking event, thematic

missions and common webinars) and Technology participants of pilot projects carried out in WP3, Task

3.3. (at least 5 pilot projects), will be especially relevant as those activities will mobilize an important

number of SMEs.

ict smes selection protocol for training and mentoring program€¦ · smes not established or...

Documents