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The initiative, launched on Wednesday, aims to bridge the digital divide between SME's and larger or multi-national companies.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is the main investor in the initiative along with contributions from the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland (CCI), News Connected and Hewlett Packard, Karen Hynes, CCI manager of e-business services told ElectricNews.Net
The new e-business programme aims to train 4,000 small and medium sized companies nationwide, and is the second phase of the CCI's training strategy, Hynes said. It began delivering training three years ago and has already trained 600 businesses.
The cost of the 15-hour training programme will vary throughout the chambers country-wide. According to Hynes the training courses are heavily subsidised and will be under IEP500.
"It is important that companies nationwide have access to practical and cost-effective e-business training," said Tom Kitt TD and Minster for Labour, Trade and Employment at the launch of the initiative. "We believe that e-business has a vital role to play in the development of the Irish economy and we are delighted as part of our commitment to endorse and fund this initiative."
At the launch, John Dunne, chief executive, Chambers of Commerce of Ireland, said that as Ireland's largest business organisation, CCI has become increasingly aware of the gap in the level of e-business training between large indigenous and multi-national companies and Irish SMEs. According to CCI, statistics show that multi-national companies and large corporations have significantly more advanced e-business training practices, thus leading to a digital divide in the Irish economy.
Dunne said that the CCI was launching a dedicated e-business initiative "to ensure that they (SMEs) can remain competitive in an increasingly widening marketplace. Smaller companies due to the lack of time and resources can often ignore and overlook e-business." He continued, "For example 90 percent of SMEs have computers, however, as our survey revealed, only one third of companies have a defined e-business strategy. This trend must change and our training programme is specifically designed to address this issue."
To mark the launch of the training programme, CCI issued results of its second national survey, which examines SME attitudes to e-business. The survey was conducted independently by Mori MRC and sponsored by News Connected.
The survey found that despite the dotcom slowdown, SMEs have reported a 76 percent increase in on-line sales and a 130 percent increase in on-line enquiries. Seventy-five percent of companies interviewed believed that e-business will dramatically change the way that business is conducted over the next five years, and only one in five SMEs reported a spend of less than IEP1,000 on technology.
Seventy percent of those interviewed believe that the cost of acquiring specialist e-business technical skills is the biggest obstacle facing SMEs. Only one percent of companies engage in on-line learning. Sixty percent of Irish companies see the cost of accessing the Internet as a problem while 71 percent see the cost of hardware as a problem.
CCI is at http://www.chambersireland.ie/.
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