Espaço Empresa / Business Space

By project DigiBEST

Published on 26 May 2020

Portugal

Norte

About this good practice

The establishment of this initiative was a response of Portuguese government to a need of a single space where SME entrepreneurs could solve problems and other issues related to their business activity. It was clear that the Portuguese SME had serious problems concerning management, but also digital services. Therefore, the municipality of Paços de Ferreira took part, as a pioneer, in the implementation of an innovative space for companies and entrepreneurs.
SME entrepreneurs and future SME can receive information, advice and support adjusted to the needs of their company in a timely manner. The entrepreneurs have at their disposal a varied range of digital services, including information about them and a mediated service for licensing processes.
The provided services are: Information, support (legal and economical) and advice for SME companies; Intermediation and facilitation (interface with Central Public Administration services); and Assisted digital service - support for the realization of online services provided by the public administration.
In the digital aspect, the ePortugal portal provides area for an Espaço Empresa services, which includes: Informative content supporting business and investment; Electronic services for the fulfilment of legal formalities (related with the creation and incorporation of companies and the licensing of economic activities); Forms for submitting requests for both meeting scheduling and online information.

Expert opinion

The Espaço Empresa / Business Space practice provides an example for a full-fledged One Stop Shop (OSS) (or single point of contact) for businesses in a small sized city (about 50.000 inhabitants), i.e. a place where usually not all services relevant to businesses in terms of administration and legal services or business support are accessible locally. It has the characteristic to combine an interface with the central public administration and business consultancy services. Whereas it is more and more common to have OSS for either of those topics, they are often not fully integrated in one place.
The good number of users speaks for the relevance of the practice.

With this respect it is also relevant to note the Interreg Europe project OSS (https://www.interregeurope.eu/oss/) deals specifically with the topic of developing such first line services for entrepreneurs. An example therefore is the practice Digital tool for supporting Start-ups (https://www.interregeurope.eu/policylearning/good-practices/item/3068/digital-tool-for-supporting-start-ups/) put in place by the Norwegian Møre and Romsdal County.
More information and examples on OSS models are to be found in our policy brief on Operational approaches to efficient business support delivery
(https://www.interregeurope.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/plp_uploads/policy_briefs/Policy_Brief_-_Efficient_business_support_ecosystems.pdf)

Luc Schmerber

Works at Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform

Resources needed

2000 EUR/month for equipment and for Human Resources (one full-time person and another half time person) this cost is supported by the budget of the municipality of Paços de Ferreira

Evidence of success

This practice is considered good because of the number of service customers that attended the Espaço Empresa/Business Space. From the beginning until now the Espaço Empresa/Business Space has assisted 700 people in the municipality of Paços de Ferreira, which is a huge number.

Potential for learning or transfer

The Espaço Empresa/Business Space is a service heavily oriented to customers with specific needs to create a small company and/or to solve problems directly related to their small or medium businesses. Being assisted by a specialized technician, help can be found in a very easy manner. By one hand, they have a person to whom the situation can be explained and, by the other, they can address the problem immediately through the digital services. The key success factors are the available specialized technicians, the concentration of different services from different public entities and the digital services available for free.
This practice can easily be transferred and implemented to address a wide range of situations, preventing people from visiting a huge number of places to create their business or to solve a problem. All the actors involved have benefits, the public services increase their efficiency and the customers save money and time!