ViVA (Virtual Valley for Rapid Growth SMEs) is a ground-breaking European project which involves two Oxford-based companies, Oxford Computer Consultants and Oxford Innovation. They collaborated with several European partners to create a web portal that provides shared state-of-the-art diagnostic and business planning software to SMEs based throughout Europe.

The ViVA project targets small-sized enterprises in a rapid growth phase and aims to contribute to their sustainable economic development by offering online application services that support them in their early years with respect to strategy, financing, marketing, commercial policies and human resource management in order to evolve from entrepreneurial to "managed" operations.

The operational development objectives of ViVA is an online Internet service based on the Application Service Provision (ASP) model that offers:

Corporate application services to support small enterprise operations by

• providing Internet-enabled ERP, CRM and eBusiness
• developing service customisation and service management features
• meeting the flexibility needs of rapidly growing small size enterprises.

Community development services to support a community of VIVA users by

• using knowledge management techniques to provide features such as Expertise Directory, business tenders, mergers and acquisitions information, job opportunities, etc
• online consulting services to enable self-assessment and strategic planning.

Two major services offered:

• diagnostic services using a corporate scorecard interfaced to ERP data in order to identify areas for improvement (a generic scorecard will be adjusted to country specific features)
• business planning services to enable development of a business plan including financial project development, primarily targetting commercial banks

Nick Warner, Director of Public Sector Products and Services at OCC, explains, "Sharing the cost of software amongst several SMEs gives them access to a much more powerful solution than they could have afforded separately. The idea is to reduce dramatically outsourcing costs that have driven many small enterprises out of business and, at the same time, help them to increase efficiencies."

OCC's multilingual web content management system, inQuire2, was used to provide members with browser-based controls to contribute pages directly into the site in French, Italian, Romanian or English. Members of this "virtual community can exchange "best practice" ideas in this forum.