Pushing small service suppliers towards the SEEM

The paper outlines the approach of an RTD project aimed at providing a wide class of small and micro companies with proper supports to adopt disciplined and efficient collaboration modes, and then approach the Single European Electronic Market (SEEM) from which they risk to be left aside. Target companies supply specialized services such as repair, maintenance, assistance, accompaniment, up to advice and design. They suffer several drawbacks, namely poor investment capability, organisational limits, difficulty to establish steady collaborations and to extend their business, problems to adopt ICT tools, while a strength point is their attitude to associate. Expected outcomes are a body of contractual supports for both short- and longterm collaboration, and a suite of ICT functions, including unified product catalogue, registry for companies and offers, bidding and order management, service planning, workflow management and performance evaluation, in a form suitable to hide the complexity of the electronic market.