<< Background >>The project “INPROFUTURE – Industry Professional’s Future Education ” is inspired by the partners long time experience working with SME national settings, but it is also inspired by the EU Commissions proposal of March 2021 to establish a Digital Compass to further target the EUʼs digital ambitions 2030 for SMEs and their employees. The “INPROFUTURE” project will focus on the cardinal point of Digital transformation of businesses and how to make possible and concrete that by 2030, three out of four SME companies should use cloud computing services, big data and Artificial Intelligence and how we can promote and ensure more than 90% SMEs should reach at least basic level of digital intensity in order to lift the number of EU unicorns to the double. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remain the backbone of the European economy, because of their high share of employment and value-added. However, a renewed focus on innovation and digitalization is required for these companies to retain their local, national or global competitiveness.The partner organisations of “INPROFUTURE” Prios Norway; Slovakian Innovation and Progress Consult Hungary have a long experience in delivering innovation and capacity building programs to support SME production and service-industry. The partners will through their cooperation with adult education providers, company instructors and in-service trainers from the SME industry create a program to help SMEs to benefit from digital transformation so that the involved SMEs in the program get access to very concrete opportunities to innovate and grow, overcome some of the significant barriers to raise digital competences from bottom to top of the SMEs. SME digital transformation processes often fail due to the lack of overview and how digital technologies can support production, logistics and market access. Employees lack digital skills to support and actively shape how their company can work more efficiently and with fewer resources. It is an important transformation process for all SMEs to motivate their staff to become ready to use digital tools and solutions. Even for the management of the SMEs it is often a difficult task to plan and raise these competences and without management and owners involved the digitalisation will not happen. Finally, the project will also approach how SMEs become better to retain qualified staff because of the possibilities they can offer to be a part of a digitalised company environment. It all has to be based on a learning strategy which the INPROFUTURE program will support the SMEs with, and to offer the same attractive conditions as large corporations. The “INPROFUTURE ” project has been established to introduce tools and methods which will support SMEs management and educator of digital skills to empower employees with the right and necessary digital skills. Management by being able to recognise the needs for skills and realisation of how better digital skills among their staff positively can affect their business. And educators with tools that will make them better able to create tailored digital skills training that meet both employees’ and employers’ needs.<< Objectives >>This project’s overall objective is to find new pathways to improve SMEs ability to understand what skills and competencies are needed to support a digital transition and to implement it within the daily production life and practice of the company, and in a cost-effective way, where the SMEs can overview and handle the process. The Project target group are adult educators (like company instructors/HR consultants), management and selected staff of the participating SME companies.The scope of the project:●develop a hands-on mapping tool for SMEs to measure, analyse and judge their degree of digitalisation and give them an understanding of what needs to be done to secure company operation and sustainability and to give the digital transition process a clear direction.●support SMEs and Educators to understand how the gaps could be filled with digital competence development, training models and ongoing capacity building to improve employees’ digital skills competences. ●motivate SMEs by showing how digital skills development can empower employees to take part in the digital transition processes in their workplace ●develop a complete toolkit and resource platform for all involved in facilitation digital skills development as part of SMEs digital transition processes. ●To launch the platform so it can be disseminated by the partners in their national settings. An English version of the platform aims to bring out the project to other interested partners.All in all, the partners of the program will implement this project “INPROFUTURE ” to further expand the ability to support the SME sector in finding their way in the digital transition and by this contribute to long term sustainability to SMEs.<< Implementation >>The project will introduce an easy-to-use mapping tool, which will provide the SMEs with an overview of the most critical aspects of digital transition and the competence and skills needed for such a transition. The mapping tool is based on a SWOT analysis used by a majority of SMEs and it provides a value-based score and assessment of the actual level of digital transition. The mapping tool will supplemented by training and capacity building recommendations, present best practices ways to initiate digital transition and list a number of resources for the SME to maintain digital transition over time. These resources will be presented in an SME-wide handbook and will be disseminated on a virtual resource platform.To ensure the relevance and useability of these tools and platform each partner will conduct a pilot in collaboration with 3 SME companies within a chosen SME business sector in each of the participating countries. The pilot will test and give feedback on relevance, effective use and the communication of the entire digital transition resource. After mapping the SMEs degree of digitalization, the findings will be transformed to proposal for digital skills training, effective training methods. The pilot will test at least 3 SMEs in each of the 3 countries. As a result of the project, both SME management and adult educators will have much better knowledge in collaboration and facilitating digital transition processes. In order to achieve long-term benefits, the project’s methodology is centred around close cooperation with all stakeholders, such as education institutions, employer and employee organisations and business sector. The professional network of the project partners aims to create a network where the wider perspective is to reach out to a higher number of potential SMEs in a given region and show how it is possible to work together in order to improve SMEs’ innovative and digital transition capacity.<< Results >>The project till in close cooperation with selected SMEs in the 3 countries builds up a facility on how SMSs can raise digital competencies and thereby ensure the better and more effective digital transition. The facility contains a mapping tool - a capacity-building handbook and a virtual resource platform to give SMEs access to all available resources.-To create measurable a set of criteria to support SMEs on how to map an SME company’s degree of digitalization and the necessary capacity building and to test the relevance and usability of these criteria by the involvement of SMEs from different business sectors. -Provide a Web-based Mapping tool to be the actual methods to measure SME degree of digitalisation and relevant competencies (measured by readymade mapping tool) -To create a guideline for the use of the mapping tool, and how SMEs are able to use it and implement it in their company practice (assessed by the survey as part of the pilot process to collect best practices)-Produce a handbook to be used on the site of SMEs by in principle all stakeholders and with a special focus on how managers and adult educators/company instructors can prepare plans to facilitate digital skills training and competence development. (best practice collection and assessment) - Handbook (at least 25-30 pages) available on 4 language - The handbook will provide recommendations for on how to set up the digital competence construction process and will give recommendations on how to ensure workplace organized training which can be customised to the individual SME.- To implement the pilot, 3-3 professionals per partner will participate in online training - The partners' professional knowledge is expanding-The mapping tool and the handbook will be tested at least with 9 SMEs altogether - Pilot process has a positive effect on the digital competence development process of the SMEs. -Collect some of the best practices showing a positive effect for learners’ digital skills improvement -Establish a digital Resource platform that includes all tools and useful sources to support stakeholders and educators involved in digital skills learning. (assessed by a survey among stakeholders and educators as well as activity logging of usage of the platform)