Red.es has just published the second call for aid for the digitization of companies with between 3 and 10 employees. This second call has an initial budget of €500 million and its purpose is to improve the competitiveness and level of digital maturity of companies in this segment.
The amount of the aid will be 6,000 euros and with it SMEs will be able to acquire digitization solutions for key areas such as: website and internet presence, management of social networks, electronic commerce; customer management; virtual office services and tools, business intelligence and analytics, process management, electronic invoicing, secure communications, and cybersecurity. In addition, in this second call, two new categories are added, such as advanced presence on the internet and marketplace. Companies interested in requesting the new aid will be able to do so from next September 2 and will be able to do so through the Red.es electronic headquarters. The term to request the digital kit will be extended for 12 months.
In order to facilitate access to aid as much as possible, the figure of the “volunteer representative” that is, any third party, whether a natural or legal person, duly authorized, can request the aid on behalf of the company.
More than 8,700 digitizers and 21,000 aids
The interest of the technology industry in the Digital Kit has been key from the beginning. Currently, more than 8,700 companies have already been approved as digitizing agents. These figures are the only ones authorized to sign “agreements for the provision of digitization solutions” with the beneficiary companies of the aid of the Digital Kit program and holders of the digital voucher, and may collaborate in the aid application process as volunteer representatives, as well as in the control actions that derive from them.
Also, they are the ones who present all the supporting documentation and those who receive the payment of the digital voucher assigned by the beneficiary, once their justification has been accepted. In such a way that they minimize the administrative procedures that SMEs have to do to promote easier and more universal access.
The deadline to join as an approved digitizing agent is still open from Red.es. An additional period with which Red.es intends to reach 10,000 approved companies that help small and medium-sized companies to transform. To date, the Digital Kit program has received around 68,000 requests And proof of the agility of the Program are the nearly 21,000 grants awarded, in just four months, to small businesses to which the first call for Digital Kit grants is directed, between 10 and less than 50 employees (segment I).
This means that 31% of the SMEs that have requested it already have the digital voucher to consume it in different digital solutions of the catalogue. This percentage of aid granted is equivalent to around 252 million euros from NextGenerationEU European funds.
