Triangular Series. The ultimate collaboration programme on Digital Skills and beyond

EDIHs have different challenges to work for in order to provide the best quality services and assistance to SMEs, PSOs, etc.

EDIHs are especially active at a regional and national scale, closer to the companies in their region. Therefore, the logic brings SMEs to their physically closer EDIH. This is the ideal case, since the EDIH located in the same region can assist better the needs of these SMEs.

Nevertheless it is seen that at certain cases the collaboration and joint work among different EDIHs could reinforce the already existing services provided to these SMEs and complement technology and capacity of the main areas of expertise of the EDIHs with others available by other EDIHs.

There is a clear need of real and active collaboration of EDIHs for the benefit of SMEs. With the aim to provide not only the best services possible based on the capacities of their EDIHs but to multiplicate these with the capacities, the three EDIHs: CIDIHUB, EDIH Aragon, Tech4EfficiencyEDIH have created the joint alliance called TRIANGULAR SERIES.

In this context, it is essential to develop a clear cooperation framework, focusing on the details of collaboration mechanisms, and designing replicable protocols that can be shared with other EDIHs. Such a protocol would hold significant value.

While all EDIHs are actively working towards this collaborative approach, not all mechanisms are easily transferable or validated.

As a result, there is considerable opportunity to propose, validate, and share solutions that can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery by the EDIHs.

Among the difficulties that this challenge encounters we find : (1) defining tailored digitalisation projects for each beneficiary, (2) identifying and selecting experts in the relevant digital technologies for each project, (3) establishing collaboration protocols between technology providers, and (4) optimising the resources allocated to different digital projects.

Triangular Series is a collaboration scheme being piloted by three EDIHs in Europe, CIDIHUB in the Canary Islands, ARAGON EDIH in Aragon and T4E in Extremadura. It is an experimental response to the main collaboration challenges introduced before. It has been designated by EDIHs focused on complementary technologies and with vast experience in different industries. In this respect, the initial situation is conducive since the complementarity is evident and provokes a more productive response for the participant EDIHs.

We together designed and detailed the common protocol and boosted an initial service together to validate the common approach. Additionally, we designed a joint and shared communication plan, to maximize the results of both the initial service and the common protocol.

The initial service to validate the approach was a collaborative and shared training programme. The programme itself was conceived around two main pillars:

1.  Digital Skills for SMEs 

2. Industry-specific digital tools and methodologies.

The main result of this collaboration initiative is the detailed collaboration scheme itself together with the exponential growth in the number of services provided by each participating EDIH, given that TRIANGULAR SERIES precisely seeks to increase the number of SMEs that receive "test before invest" services. On top of that, we expect that this collaboration programme will also impact in the number of Digital Maturity Assessments that the three EDIHs will be doing in the next 12 months.

Additionally, TRIANGULAR SERIES also proposes a joint communication programme together with the validation action focused on a common digital skills programme that is shown below. 

As the validation action is centred on two main pillars: (1) Digital Skills for SMEs and (2) Industry-specific digital tools and methodologies, the details of the programme are presented in the next two tables: