An E-Activities Platform to Support SMEs

Abstract

E-activities are considered a very powerful tool for the strengthening of enterprises and enterprising in general. They include among others, e-learning, e-government, e-commerce and e-business, which are the main e-activities that directly interest the enterprises. This article presents and describes a compound e-government environment-application that is addressed to enterprises, which incorporates e-learning and training activities within the enterprises on issues covering ICTs and e-activities. Moreover, particular emphasis is given to the exploitation of the Internet technologies and e-commerce from the enterprises in order to exploit the various forms of e-commerce and e-promotion of their products. For example through B2B transactions (Business to Business), there is the potential of reducing the operational expenses for the procurement cycle for their products. Furthermore, through B2C transactions (Business to Consumer), there is the potential to promote worldwide the products and services of the SMEs and finally, through e-advertisement there is the opportunity to exploit the Internet as a promotion medium for the activities of the SMEs. The environment covers all the aforementioned e-services and offers educational e-content for them. Finally, this article presents the electronic infrastructure that was developed in the framework of a relevant European project (Leonardo Da Vinci) for the supporting of e-activities in the field of enterprising and SMEs.