Implemented

The pilot Project SERBATEC for the creation of a Cross-border Net of Resources and Technology-based Services aimed at creating the right conditions to favour the creation and consolidation of technology-based companies in the Galicia - North of Portugal Euroregion, giving priority to the structuring of an interior axis (Lugo / Ourense / Braga / Porto) concurring with the so-called Atlantic Axis.

The initiative gave rise to a portal (www.serbatec.com) designed in team by Galician and Portuguese partners under the protection of the INTERREG IIIA Community Initiative.

This portal tries to help businessmen, entrepreneurs and, on the whole, any person who has an idea of business and who seeks information to create his/her company or to site it in any place in the Galicia – North of Portugal Euroregion.

In this sense, SERBATEC has a number of tools which provide the user with information about the following questions: search for financing, location of industrial ground, site of the resources of the chain of value of the companies in particular sectors, and information about entities of interest related to the protection of knowledge.

Critic services

The project gives support to the initiatives of cross-border technological cooperation facilitating the access of companies with a technological basis to a number of critic services that no other project or net of the area offers, such as:

- Tools for knowledge protection. The objective of these tools is to increase the number of patents and copyright offices in the Euroregion.

- Mechanisms of support to the marketing of products and services. Due to the constant process of internalization, the companies need to increase their business dimension looking for the attainment of several cooperation agreements and their technological innovation, with impact on both production and distribution processes and on management as well. With the aim of helping companies of the area in this field, SERBATEC offers to the entrepreneurs and technological companies of the area local logistic packages (University – CIT – Companies – Associations – Clusters – Company Centres) and tools of technological diagnosis on-line.

- Tools and financing opportunities in the Euroregion. This tool supports to design of financing strategies on-line for a better exploitation of the tools of public and private financing of the company.

- Resources of business support present in the region. It includes support infrastructures, industrial ground, financing tools, marketing, etc. which are complemented by local logistic packages to identify critical agents in the very chain of value. The idea of using these two tools is to increase the contact between companies and institutions with a technological basis at both sides of the border, and to facilitate the capture of industrial investments in the Euroregion, related to locational advantages or associated to processes of expansion of other industrial centres (for example, the automobile sector, textile sector, etc. ) and this way face the scarce foreign investment in the area. This service is very important considering the increasing competitiveness between regions for the capture of companies and investments, visitors and community funds.

Tecnópole has installed a pioneering system of electricity saving which is a test bed and a demonstration centre for any public lighting network requiring it, industrial estates, town councils …

Tecnópole gets involved in this project in the framework of its strategy of support to the development of efficient and sustainable energetic solutions. The system has already proved its capacity of reducing the energy expenditure and maintenance costs as a key factor to improve the service quality. In this sense, the system allows a 70% saving of energy used by the public lighting network and 50% of the maintenance costs.

This system is based on the integration of a communications network in the lighting network itself, which results in the possibility of carrying out control tasks and remote programming and it also results in owning intelligent control panels thanks to the remote access that can be carried out by means of several technologies such as GSM IP net, etc. The software of control and management allows to programme the whole lighting infrastructures in an integral way, but it also allows the working of each light point that makes up, the public network in an individual way.

Likewise, the intelligent control system checks the installation status continually, and it even has the capacity of making decisions both to reduce the energy expenditures all the time and to avoid breakdowns in the net.

The programme “Tecnópole undertakes” consisted of an initiative of support to create and consolidate enterprises with innovative profile that helped to take off three enterprising teams with technology business ideas.

Between April and July 2008 the entrepreneurs received specialized training and advice, as well as advantages to their access to the enterprise incubator in Tecnopole. Through a specialized programme of 70 hours about practical learning of managing and business models, the entrepreneurs acquired the knowledge to elaborate the initial version of their Business Plan.

The entrepreneurs that participated in the programme started their first steps in R&D projects about new olive tree crops that are being established in the province of Ourense such as the alternative to the vine; non-alcoholic wine and enriched with polyphenols marketing; and the development of “smart” bracelets to people with hearing impairment.

Throughout 2008 five enterprises benefited from the programme ”Tecnópole PRO-TIC”, directed to the establishment of the Information Technology(IT) in their processes in order to increase their productivity and therefore, their competitiveness.

The enterprises of the Park that participated in the programme were provided, without any cost, of a personalized comprehensive plan to integrate new technologies to their activity.

The process started off with the first stage with a deep analysis of the strategy and the enterprise processes to identify the possible advances of the IT establishing. Once identified the support tools, it was assess what were profitable for the enterprise in terms of return on investment.

Then, the design of the best strategy was developed and the establishment of the more appropriate solutions in each case, predominating the ones developed by the Galician industry of the sector. Finally, a monitoring process was carried out where it was supervised the implementation of the IT plan to guarantee the success.

The Technology Park of Galicia performed in 2008 the pilot project “Tecnópole electronic invoice” by which four enterprises located in its facilities were selected to receive assistance in the implementation of the electronic invoice that allows to save up to 3,5 euros between the issuer and the receiver.

The fist action was the celebration of a seminar about the electronic invoice where 10 enterprises attended interested by the advantages of using this system.

After the training, four enterprises were selected to implement the electronic invoice, with the managing company of the Technology Park. The most adequate solution was decided after a study of the current market offer and directed to meet specific needs of the participating enterprises (turnover, integration need, invoice issue frequency, desired format, etc.).

The chosen solution was the one offered by Camerfirma, through the Chamber of Commerce of Ourense. It is about a remote access application that does not require specific installation in the enterprises and is accessed by authentication with public key certificate hardware (USB key)

Through this project, Tecnópole is financing the 3 first years of the electronic invoice implementation in the selected enterprises.

Tecnópole registers this initiative within its Corporate Social Responsibility policy due to the positive environmental impact not using invoices on paper and post procedures.

According to a study performed by the Pricewaterhouse Coopers consulting firm among enterprises in the European Union, the increase of the efficiency is the main improvement that the enterprises consider with the electronic invoice, followed closely by the cost reduction. Regarding this, the Spanish Association of Commercial Coding (AECOC) estimates in about 0.70 euros the saving per invoice for the sender and up to 2.78 euros for the receiver.

The PARQUE project (Reinforcement and Strengthening of Business-Useful Resources) is an experimental plan whose main objective is to approach the Galicia-North of Portugal Euroregion, improving its business competitivity by means of a sustainable model. It has been working since May 2006 and its goals are to get investments, to improve the basic services in the parks, to install advanced services of technological transfer and to stimulate the cross-border business internationalization and cooperation.

The aim of the project is to implement and validate an experimental plan of action which will provide new services to six new business parks in Galicia and North of Portugal to transform them into attraction poles of new business investments. It will also reinforce the competitive improvement of the companies already settled, providing a specialized support to the agents in their process of technological transition. The project has a budget of nearly three million euros, a 75% of which the FEDER will be in charge of.

Six business parks of the Euro region participate in the project. They work as primary nodes of the Telépole cross-border net (Red Telemática de Parques Empresariales: Telematic Net of Business Parks), interconnecting such infrastructures virtually by means of a net over VoIP. The business parks that form the Telépole net are Sabón (A Coruña), O Ceao (Lugo), Parque Tecnológico y Logístico de Valladares (Vigo), Parque Tecnolóxico de Galicia (Ourense), Zona Industrial de Chaves (Chaves) and the Zona Industrial de Bragança (Bragança)

Apart from the communications over VoIP, common services of videosurveillance, videostreaming, webcasting and geographical location in the parks participating in the Project will be introduced. They will act as initial nodes of a net with extensive vocation reaching the rest of infrastructures of industrial ground present in the Euroregion.

General objectives.

• To promote the competitive improvement of the productive base of the euroregion in accordance with the impacts derived from the internationalization and globalization of economy.
• To reinforce the modernization of the new investment attraction poles.
• To contribute to the creation of an integrated cross-border market.

Specific objectives.

• To extend the information society into the economy and business web.
• To stimulate the business initiative capacity.
• To organize information and knowledge transfer nets.
• To develop services common to the border companies.
• To develop a Telematic net of Advanced Services of Telecommunications for Business Parks.

 Strategies.

The action plan sees the introduction of the following main strategies:

• Improvement of basic services in the existing parks.
• Determination of a sustainable model of business parks.
• Development and implementation of advanced services of technological transfer.
• Reinforcement of the cross-border internationalization and business cooperation.
• Investment captures

The role of the Park in the project.

Tecnópole participates in the project as a technological partner supporting the introduction of advanced solutions of IP telephony in the different business parks with the aim of building the so called TELÉPOLE Net, which will be the telematic support of voice interconnection over IP protocol of the six parks participating in the project.

Advantages

The integration of elements such as the videoconference and IP video telephony has the potential of changing the way in which the organizations communicate completely. It provides all the benefits of IP telephony and IP videoconference, such as costs reduction, productivity increase, maximization of the technological infrastructure capacity, but above all, it provides a powerful tool of cooperation, solving the problem of users that do not have video systems and who will be able to interact with those that do have them thanks to this solution.

Click here to enter the Park Project web.

Tecnópole is the reference company of the Galician R&D Aerials, a set of spaces for the capture of research projects, development and technological innovation which is starting to work in the industrial states of Galicia. The initiative is jointly financed by the Xunta de Galicia and by the European Fund of Regional Development (Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional: FEDER)

The R&D Aerials is being introduced in the first stage of the project in the business estates of Sabón, in A Coruña, of Pereiro de Aguiar, in Ourense and of Ceao, in Lugo. Later, any Galician industrial site can ask for the adhesion to this service.

The main objective of this initiative is to direct and meet the needs of the companies in R&D and innovation matters, helping to improve the competitiveness of the Galician private sector. The project has its main support for the companies in the www.antenasimasd.com web site, which will help them to channel all the tasks related to innovation.

The R&D Aerials net is thought of to offer the Galician companies to make the effort of setting out innovating projects, an integral service of accompaniment which includes the necessary support to the negotiation of assistance and subventions, the search of partners to develop projects, the specialized management and direction of projects, the actions to be taken in industrial property matters, the identification and publication of already existing technologies, and the R&D and innovation training.

Virtual windows

This virtual space of R&D Aerials net also wants to be a window of innovating technologies, providing the results of the R&D and innovation projects to the business users and participating in its diffusion in an active way.
Through this electronic platform one can also get access to the management system of R&D and innovation projects, supported at the same time by a computer tool which allows its general implementation in all those companies that require it. These procedures will always include training actions so that users have from the beginning the necessary knowledge to participate in the net.

The portal has a board of projects with a section of technologies, in which companies can make public the projects they are developing and the results of those they have already carried out and they want to make known. One can also find there the technologies that others have developed and they may find interesting.