Enterprise Ireland eBIT Initiative

Horwood International Ltd. were engaged by Enterprise Ireland (EI) to monitor and evaluate the eBIT (eBusiness and IT Advice) Initiative which ran from May to December 2003.

The eBIT initiative, which was financed by the Information Society Fund, aimed to prepare SMEs to take full advantage of IT systems and to position them to exploit the possibilities that eBusiness can provide. It set out to provide support to eligible SMEs, firstly through a free-day consultancy to help a company analyse its present IT capability and eBusiness potential and, secondly, through a multi-day consultancy to help a company review its IT and eBusiness needs, and to prepare an appropriate action plan.

Horwood were tasked to assist EI with monitoring the quality of the consultancy support provided under the eBIT initiative. This included giving recommendations to EI for grant payment under the multi-day programme, based on an anlysis of the work done by the consultant, and provision of appropriate feedback to consultants whose work was grant aided under eBIT. As a second task Horwood were asked to evaluate the eBIT initiative in general.

The objectives within the two principal tasks were:

To assist EI and other agencies in determining whether:
· consultancy assignments had been conducted in accordance with the company's original proposal;
· consultancy assignments had been conducted at the required quality level;
· the number of consultancy days for which companies claimed grant support was consistent with the amount of work done.
To advise client companies on the eligibility for grant payment of the assignment before submitting their claim;
To provide advice and constructive criticism to individual eBIT consultants to improve the way that the consultant carries out current or similar future assignments.
To present at briefing sessions for grant-aided consultants to clarify the nature of the reports required, the quality assessment process and the various administrative requirements of the Initiative.
To prepare a report dealing with three main topics:
· an evaluation of the two consultancy modules of the eBIT initiative;
· an analysis of the ICT status and issues facing participating companies;
· the quality of the consultancy advice available from the eBIT consultants.

To provide recommendations on measures EI might take to enhance the skills of the consultancy base in this field.

For further details email@horwood.com