Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

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BENCHMARKING NATIONAL AND REGIONAL SUPPORT SERVICES FOR SMES IN THE FIELD OF INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY
detailed indicators is lower, but this, of course, has to be seen in the light of the
suitability of specific measures in the individual service context.
Only about half of the service providers reported actual figures for the number of
beneficiaries. The range – between 4 and 286,244 – was quite spectacular and has
to be seen (i) against the individual service designs/type of services and, following
this, (ii) in terms of what service providers count as beneficiaries. Accordingly, there
is a qualitative difference between, for example, the number of visitors to a website
and the number of persons who received one-to-one in depth consulting.
Furthermore, some providers actually do not have information on the number of
beneficiaries as such, but use proxies as estimates, e.g., the number of supported
projects instead of the number of supported companies. The usage of such proxies
may involve issues like double counting. Given also different service goals and
scopes, it does not make sense to compare data concerning for the number of users
of the service, however relevant this might be as a monitoring indicator for the
individual service.
Having said that it is still interesting to note that about 70 % of the services
reported having more than 100 users p.a. The median value recorded amounted
to 463 users. Yet, when looking for services for the case study analysis, services
which would forward contact data for as many as 50 users were hard to find. Data
confidentiality may play a role in this context, as may also issues related to
governance (see also section 5.3.2). According to experts, the actual SME user base
for many IPR support services – especially for services which extend funding or
provide in-depth consulting, i.e. what one could consider to be higher level services
– may be rather small.
User out-reach
Against this background, many service providers, and also users of the services
analysed as case studies, point to the lack of visibility of the offerings and rather
weak marketing activities, especially in Europe. An explanatory factor for the
difficulties in reaching out to the target group can be often seen in the institutional
set-up (see also section 5.3.3). Rather low endorsement with financial resources
also seems to frequently constitute a constraint for larger outreach activities.
5.3.5.2 Expected and actual outcome and impact
of the IPR support services
Graph 15 shows the indicators used by service providers to measure the outcome
of their activities. Notwithstanding the fact that some of the measures might not
be relevant for specific types of service, one can clearly see that service providers
tend to focus most on customer satisfaction and on the number of IPR titles
(especially patents) filed and/or granted with support from the service when
gathering information on the actual outcome of their activities.
Most providers who take account of user satisfaction believed that their customer
base is generally happy with the services offered. The extent to which these
statements are backed up by evidence, however, varies considerably. While some
conduct user satisfaction surveys and few carry out evaluations, others base their
opinion on circumstantial evidence (such as that people usually do not complain)
or on hearsay only. The results of the user survey, however, show that the vast
majority of the users of the 15 case study services are highly satisfied. Only at times
have there been complaints about issues related to timely delivery or administrative
burdens.
Patents filed with support from a service – a misleading indicator?
The indicator in Graph 15 “patents filed with support from the service” is used to
different extents by about a third of the benchmarked services. However, it was
possible to obtain actual figures only for about a dozen measures; the others
rejected quoting figures for one or a combination of the following reasons: (i) data
protection issues (ii) apparent young age of the programme, and thus the lack of
a track record particularly given that there may be considerable time lags between