In view of markets globalization and attraction of investments and partners from the EU to Russia and vice versa, it is advisable that SMEs acquire an unified approach to evaluation of their current activities, elaboration of strategic recommendations and making reports comprehensible for partners and investors.

“INOCOR” Ltd. from Novosibirsk implements science-intensive projects in various areas. One of them relates to the development and application of software for business analysis — a service product for implementing strategic planning function at SMEs operating in the EU and Russia.

The company looked for EU partner — a developer of similar package — for joint implementation of the project.

For this purpose, “INOCOR” Ltd. addressed Technopark “Novosibirsk”, a RTTN-GateRuBIN partner centre, and placed the technology offer “Programming product to support SMEs in strategic planning and strategic investment decisions” in the databases of RTTN-GateRuBIN and Enterprise Europe Network.

Through a keyword search, Technopark “Novosibirsk” found a matching technology profile and, with assistance from the Project Coordination Team in Obninsk and German Enterprise Europe Network centre ZENIT, established a contact with the Institut für Unternehmenskybernetik e.V. in Aachen, Germany — a developer of a tool to facilitate strategic investment decisions by taking into account not only hard factors but also soft factors like customer satisfaction.

After discussing the possible cooperation options, with an active involvement of the network representatives in Novosibirsk, Obninsk and Germany, a technical cooperation agreement was signed. Natalia Mamonova, “INOCOR” Vice-President, says: “The discussions were going in a most constructive way. We succeeded in identifying a first stage that includes developing an integrated software module for combining the functions of two analytical systems: “StratManager” (developed by our company) and NOWs (developed by the Institut für Unternehmenskybernetik). If the result is positive, we’ll proceed to creating a full-service system for supporting SMEs in strategic planning and strategic investment decisions in European Union and Russia based on our software products”.

The integrated system is expected to be finalized by September 2010.