According to Europe 2020, in a changing world the EU needs to become a smart, sustainable &inclusive economy, in order for the Member States to deliver high levels of employment, productivity &social cohesion. Despite this strategy & the hard efforts of Europe to recover from a severe economic crisis, unemployment rates are still high, especially for the countries affected by European debt crisis. Taking into consideration that more than 99% of all European businesses are SMEs that provide 2/3 of the private sector jobs &contribute to more than half of the total value-added created by businesses in the EU, the critical role of SMEs in achieving the Europe 2020 strategy becomes more evident. However, SMEs have had to navigate a difficult economic terrain in recent years leading to poor performance in indicators such as number of enterprises, value added, &employment. On the other hand, lots of studies show that even within the current economic conditions, there are still companies, which show a remarkable yield, way above the average of their sector, and it seems that they get a benefit from the crisis and make use of chances and changes. Why? How? Numerous studies &reports identify that targeted training, exploitation of financing opportunities, internationalisation, improvement of business environment, investments in innovation & new technologies, productivity &resource efficiency plans, are considered critical factor of growth &development. But, again, what makes an SME capable to perform well in these factors? What is the secret of success of those SMEs that, despite the trend, manage to excel? This question is what the proposed project tried to investigate, believing that the answer should reveal the secret of success, lying under the internal management system adopted by the SME “stars”, should reveal the specific needs of SMEs, in terms of internal capabilities, that, when satisfied (via training, among other plans), a viable future & even growth should be ensured. In order to achieve this ambitious objective, an in-depth analysis of the management systems attributes was necessary & was offered by the various standards, models & tools that are or can be applied to SMEs which include bits & pieces of the complete picture of business “excellence” & business “potential”. Within the scope of the proposed project, the complete list of attributes identified in this way should help to develop a questionnaire: (a) to serve as a field research tool for the identification of the “secrets of success” of the management systems of SMEs &(b) to serve as a self-evaluation tool (after the completion of the project) for SMEs in order to regularly identify areas for improvement, a desk & field research conducted for the identification & analysis of common attributes of successful & non-successful examples & key success factors of successful SMEs & skills & competences & organizational knowledge necessary for the accomplishment of the key success factors identified & a modular e-learning VET program for employers &employees was developed in different steps for the staff. The main project objective was to analyse powerful tool & flexible training program that should manage to link the market needs with the training offered, in a way that should allow effective use of resources (people, time) & clear connection of training with business results. In order to achieve these objectives a flexible but representative & of high expertise partnership, composed by organisations from Italy (2 organisations), Greece, Spain, Portugal; Bulgaria and Polandhas been formed.Besides the assessment tool and the VET activities, the team of the 7 organizations also aimed at developing a culture of self-assessment and continuous improvement in the SMEs community and to create long lasting impact to SMEs and their employers and staff, individuals and entrepreneurs, by upgrading the designed outputs to management tools, regularly applied in order to identify and address areas for improvement in the internal business function.