Around 300,000 companies, micro-businesses and self-employed workers have now received assistance from the Kit Digital programme. This is the case of A Coruña SME Norquality Consultants, dedicated to the implementation of management systems with 24 employees.
New open appeal: From 12 September, property societies, commercial civil societies, professional civil societies and agricultural enterprises with shared ownership will also be able to apply for assistance.
Managing partner José Manuel Martínez explains that they decided to ask for help from the Kit Digital program because they already had the digitalization of their company in mind. “The implemented solutions will improve the overall management of the entire company,” says José Manuel.
The Kit Digital program is an initiative of the Government of Spain, managed by Red.es, an organization affiliated with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, through the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence. It has a budget of 3,067 million euros, financed by the European Union through Next Generation EU funds, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, which aims to digitalize SMEs and self-employed people with less income. 50 employees from all productive sectors in the national region.
The program also includes the participation of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce as a collaborating organization.
Approximately 1,350 million for Spanish SMEs
To date, nearly 300,000 aids have been provided from the Digital Kit program; This means that around €1.35 billion of Next Generation EU funding is in the hands of Spanish SMEs for their digitalisation.
More than 32,000 digital vouchers have been issued in the Valencian Community and more than €151 million from NextGenerationEU funds have reached Valencian SMEs to implement essential digitalization solutions.
The deadline to request assistance from Kit Digital on all calls is open until December 31, 2024. Bonuses are €12,000, €6,000 and €2,000 depending on the number of workers the company or freelancer has.
If the applicant meets the conditions and his application is correct, the bonus is given within 15 days.
If the applicant fulfills the requirements and fills out the form correctly, they will be given a digital coupon within 15 days that they can use in one or more solutions from the catalog consisting of up to 12 solution categories, available at www.acelerapyme. These are: basic presence on the website and the Internet, social network management, e-commerce, customer management, virtual office services and tools, business intelligence and analytics, process management, electronic invoice, secure communication, cyber security, advanced presence on the Internet and in the market.
Norquality Consultores preferred solutions that would greatly benefit their business. “Secure connections to communicate directly with customers, working from customer premises, thanks to the VPN connection we work directly on our server. “We thus optimize time, costs and paper reduction,” comments the managing partner.
Approximately 10,900 digitization representatives throughout Spain
Kit Digital has approximately 10,900 affiliated agencies throughout Spain, 98% of which are small ICT companies. As in the case of 1MB Project Manager Israel Contreras Martín, a digitization representative affiliated with Kit Digital, who is aware of the benefits and effectiveness of the program. “In my experience after many years in the industry, this program is by far the best program of its kind I have been involved with. In most cases, subsidy amounts are sufficient to cover the total amount of the project, procedures are relatively simple, and control and justification processes somewhat prevent fraud.” Membership in the program will remain open throughout its duration.
If the reason is correct, payment will be made in less than 60 days.
The program wanted to give a leading role to ICT SMEs to ensure that digitalization is sustained over time and that the efficiency of beneficiary companies and digitalization representatives is increased. In fact, in a survey conducted by Red.es between February and April 2023 among a sample of 4,400 digitization representatives, almost 90% confirmed that they would continue to sign deals, and more than 50% highlighted that Kit Digital had increased its turnover. . As Contreras Martín assures. “The overall experience has been good; it has allowed us to increase business in this part of our services. The processes are very clear.”
Thanks to the Kit Digital program, more than 350,000 digital transformation projects have been launched for small and self-employed businesses across the country to date.
The digitization representative is responsible for the implementation of the technological solution in the SME or self-employed beneficiary of the digital voucher and receives financial assistance after correctly justifying his work. Therefore, your responsibility is to implement the solution and justify your work to raise funds. This justification will be done by presenting a set of evidence defined in the guidelines for each solution.
Currently, the maximum payment period for work performed is 60 days if the justification is correct. This is an unprecedented achievement in the management of public aid across Europe. Currently, 98% of the grounds submitted more than 60 days ago have already been paid, and the rest are being corrected.
Interest channels for beneficiaries and digitization representatives
“We are very pleased with the Kit Digital program because these are solutions that we already had in mind, that we have implemented, and the results are very satisfactory and we are increasingly convinced that this is the way to go. I recommend it 100%,” says Norquality Consultores.
If you need more information, they can help you by calling 900 909 001 or at www.acelerapyme.es.
If you are a digitization representative, you have a dedicated service channel via phone 900 906 677 or email [email protected].