For any community, entrepreneurship and creativity is a key driver, values that to a large extent thrive in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Automated business processes are costly to install and require a cultural change in the way business is conducted and service offered. For the SMEs the cost of automating business operations, and thereby becoming integrated into the larger business scene, as well as the cost of adjusting to a new mindset is currently perceived to be too high.

What the SMEs need is a modular approach, enabling them to gradually build their technical infrastructure and capabilities as well as recognizing other key elements required for becoming eBusiness integrated, i.e. doing business electronically.

Such an approach is currently being developed in the eBCM-RAP project; a cross cultural, multinational European project. The centrepiece of the project is the “eBusiness Community Model, eBCM”, which is designed to cover all the major elements needed for advancing towards an e-Business. In the project this model is being developed and upgraded based on three studies on the status of eBusiness in the partner countries. The project partners are all members of the European Network of National Test-beds for eBusiness, ETeB.