SME : a springboard towards Internet

Thanks to the met@l-06.net operation, ten SME in metallurgy, from the French Riviera, will be able to be launched on the Web.

The Gimeca, the group of mechanical engineering and electronic industries of the French Riviera, federates 180 firms that hire 11,000 salaried people. Among its members, some are already in the heart of new technologies, such as IBM La Gaude (the manager of which, Christian Poujardieu, is also the current chairman of the Gimeca) others are experts in more traditional sectors : metallurgy, boilermaking industry, mechanical engineering industry…The met@l-06.net operation should help them to pass the turning point of the new economy, more easily. With the support of the DRIRE (the regional direction for the industry, the research, and the environment) and of the general Council of the Alpes Maritimes, the Gimeca asked the Imet (the Mediterranean Institute of teleactivities) to lead an action of Internet training that has a 430,000 franc budget. Ten selected firms are going to benefit from it between May 2000 and January 2001. It plans a diagnostic stage of the firms' needs, and then a personalized accompaniment in order to implement a project of the NTIC use, serving its activity.The advantages of the e-businessDuring the day of the met@l-06.net presentation that was held in the CICA, in Sophia Antipolis, the participating managers were shown the multiple advantages of an entry in the e-business, by several interveners. For Christian Poujardieu, 'the competitive dynamic that the Web implies, will determine the winners and the losers. The fastest firms with the greatest reaction, will be ranked at the top : it is one of the greatest interests of the SME of the third millennium'; meanwhile, Jacques Gros, the Chairman of the Telecom Valley association quoted the traditional SME communities as an example, such as tanneries, that find new opportunities on Internet.As for Michel Pillet, the manager of AMC, a SME from Saint-Cézaire specialized in the manufacture of electric circuits for electrolysis plants, he attested the way the creation of a website in 1997 gave a new international expansion to its small company that has been strongly growing. 'Thanks to e-mails, with our customers, we can exchange technical data, that were materialized by kilos of plans before ! We were also able to get contracts with foreign customers who had seen what we made on our website'. Therefore, we showed even a 'low-tech' firm (as Michel Pillet describes his firm with humour) can felicitously exist on Internet…Contact :Gimeca – Tel : 04 37 25 45 00 – Fax : 04 97 25 45 01ImeT : imet@wanadoo.fr