1996 - European Telework Week

Telework 96
2.6.2. Telecentres and smaller businesses
Much of the potential for job creation in Europe rests with small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs). The HRM TC, TWIN and EVONET projects all made contributions
to exploring ways in which small businesses and the self-employed can make use of
Telecentres and teleworking.
If SMEs are important, there is clearly a strategic value in ensuring that business advice
is made available to this sector in a suitably appropriate form. Whether provided by
private-sector organisations or public bodies, business advice generally tends to be
delivered at a local level. Telematics, however, enables advice centres to network
together to share resources and expertise.
This was the starting point for the HRM TC project, based in the former steel-production
centres straddling the French (Lorraine), Belgian (Wallonie) and Luxembourg borders,
which developed a model of TeleService Centres (Centres de TéléService). This model
was demonstrated in a pilot trans-border scheme involving three CTSs, in Belgium and
France.
Under this model, the business person seeking assistance makes contact with a local
TeleService Centre either in person, by telephone, by fax, or via an on-line service. Each
individual centre is networked together through computer links, and enquiries which
cannot be dealt with locally are passed through the network either to another TeleService
Centre or to an individual expert specialist, also connected to the network.
Small businesses can also use telematics to develop markets outside the immediate
locality, or indeed the country, where they are based. The idea of companies effectively
creating a 'virtual' presence for themselves in other countries was something which the
EVONET project explored in a very practical way.
EVONET developed technology for an international telephone switching service, which
will enable Telecentres or business centres in one country to act as virtual offices for
companies based in other countries. Under this service, calls from potential customers in
one country are answered and then forwarded automatically to the appropriate person in
the host company, without the caller necessarily being aware of where the person they
are talking to is based.
EVONET’s 'trunk-to-trunk switching' service has been successfully implemented at four
business centres. Unfortunately, however, there are legislative restrictions in force in
several countries which have yet to liberalise their international telephony rules, which
currently mean that this service cannot be used in all European countries.
Disabled people face barriers of other kinds, and because of economic, social and
political hurdles in their way are more likely than other groups to make their own work
through self-employment. Teleworking can expand dramatically the employment
possibilities for disabled people and the development of assisting technology means that
the disabled now, for perhaps the first time, can compete in the labour market on a more
or less equal footing.
The TWIN project partners between them monitored developments at eleven pilot sites
where people with disabilities were undertaking training in teleworking or were engaging
in telework itself. These were in Greece, Italy, Finland, Ireland and the UK.
- 49 -