The public entity Red.es, attached to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, today presented its long-awaited Digital Toolkit program, under the Spain May program and the Next Generation EU budgets. Through two simultaneous events, in Madrid and Barcelona, we have been able to see the details already announced yesterday by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Through this program, the Administration wants a million freelancers and SMEs in our country to be digitized, since only 17% of these businesses have embarked on their digital transformation. The economic injection, coming from European funds, will be of 3,000 million euros that will finance a series of services and solutions available in the market.
AceleraPyme Program
At the beginning of the year, the Government presented the plan Digitization of SMEs 2021-2025, with a budget of 4,656 million euros and whose lines of action and measures are aimed at establishing a set of programs for the basic digitization of SMEs, support for change management, disruptive innovation and digital entrepreneurship and support for digitization sectorial.
Among the programs stands out the Digital Toolkit, from Red.es, which will have a first call, endowed with about 500 million, for companies between 10 and 49 workers. All the information will be posted on the AceleraPyme portal, which has been adapted and updated with the entire range of economic services for SMEs, with the idea of turning it into a digital hub. This information will be accessible from the digital platform, but also in person, thanks to a network of more than 100 offices distributed throughout the Spanish geography that will help clarify doubts but, above all, reduce bureaucracy.
The AIDS will be up to 12,000 euros per company and will materialize through the delivery of a digital voucher valid for 24 months. The deadline for submitting applications will be, at least, three months from the publication of the call in the BOE or until exhaustion of the credit.
AceleraPyme will have the help of so-called«Facilitating Agents» who will be the ones who will offer and inform about digitization programs to all those who request it. With respect to content of these programs are those described in the SME Digitization Plan 2021-2025, which we mentioned at the beginning of this article. Among them are:
- Training of managers and employees. Grant to participate in specialized courses to improve skills
digital data of the employee and managerial staff. - Agents of change. Grant for hiring experts in digital transformation for at least six months.
- Digital Toolkit. Grant to implement existing digitization solutions for, among others, digital marketing and Internet presence, electronic sales, digital customer management, digital office, logistics and digital warehouses.
- Connectivity bonuses. Grant to access connectivity bonuses for the company.
- Protect your business. Grant to subscribe services to protect the company from cybersecurity threats.
The figure of digitizing agents
From the Yotramito platform they remind us that the contracting of said solutions will have to be made through the digitizing agents figure (companies that will provide the tools and / or services). Practically all (98%) of Spanish SMEs and large companies have an internet connection and the percentage of companies that incorporate cybersecurity measures increases year by year (96.3% of medium and large companies have already done so).
In parallel, the gap among micro, medium and large companies that implement IT tools and processes, it increases. In the case of cloud computing, for example, this gap stands at 19.6 percentage points and in the case of companies with a website it shoots up to 49.3 percentage points, according to Yotramito.
To streamline processes and distribute aid, the so-called DTK packages, Basic digitization packages that have been divided as follows:
- Digital marketing: digital presence, web and app development, hosting service, positioning and digital marketing channels, development of product catalogs, customer analysis and management solutions (CRM), etc.
- Electronic commerce: e-commerce capabilities, point of sale terminal, etc.
- Digital company administration: enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), applications for the digitization and automation of business processes (e.g., accounting, inventory management, logistics, etc.), electronic invoicing, integration with electronic administration and digital signature, digital work, mobility solutions, digital signing and teleworking, collaboration environment, communication and videoconferencing, office automation, storage and back-up, cybersecurity, etc.,
In addition to these, they may suggest other additional DTK Packages, including aggregations thereof, adequately justifying the reasons why they should be taken into consideration. Each DTK Package can be modulated in levels of complexity: basic, medium, advanced and will be implemented using the digitization solutions available in the market, offered by the Digitization Agents, enhancing the cloud service modalities (as a Service), which must guarantee the creation of quality employment in Spain. All DTK Packages must include specific training to SMEs and freelancers for the effective implementation of solutions.
