KEG Saar

The Competence Center for Electronic Commerce (KEG) Saar is one of 22 nation-wide regional Competence Centers that have been sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour (BMWA = Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Arbeit) over the last five years. It is part of the Federal Government’s “Information society Germany” action programme. The center focus on regional areas and supports small and medium sized enterprises in the introduction and use of modern information and communication technologies to increase their competitiveness. KEG Saar is managed by the Center for Productivity and Technology Saar e. V. (ZPT) and the In-stitute for Information Systems at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and supported by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK). The KEG Saar started in October 1998 with a range of services for medium sized enterprises in the Saar-Lor-Lux-region. It addresses all industrial and commercial companies as well as service and craft businesses. Building on the three areas of information, consulting and qualification, it devel-oped numerous activities that aimed to increase the regional companies’ awareness of the Internet and electronic business. These include up-to-date information about all fields of application of electronic commerce through events (e. g. regional events in cooperation with the supporting institutions and the local Chambers of Industry and Commerce (IHK)), on an annual IT-congress, through series of articles in print me-dia, booklets and on the webpage (http://www.keg-saar.de). Furthermore KEG Saar offers independent and competent consulting in all questions concerning electronic commerce as well as qualification through seminars, courses and workshops. In addition to these basic services KEG Saar set up a demonstration center since march 2000, which offers a wide range of electronic business applications. It is unique in the nation-wide network of competence centers. Using concrete scenarios, possible applications in the individual business areas are presented and electronic business strategies are shown. A series of workshops was developed for the scenarios, which focuses on topics that companies classified as important, and is imple-mented together with experts from business and science. KEG Saar regularly conducts guided tours through the different rooms where an expert explains and demonstrates the characteristics of electronic business to small groups. Under real conditions interested enterprises can test different types of applications that are relevant for the electronic commerce. In the context of guided tours, workshops and trainings the entrepre-neurs learn not only the use of IT-Systems and applications software, they also become suggestions how the use of Internet-based information technologies can help them arrange their business proc-esses more efficiently (also with respect to customers and suppliers). The following topics and pos-sible applications in companies are clearly shown in the scenarios: online shop, video-conferencing, connection to standard software, electronic procurement, payment systems, e-learning, global working, Open Source applications, mobile technologies like W-LAN and Bluetooth, and broadband transmission via satellite. Therefore the demonstration center is a central meeting point for regional enterprises for the presentation of innovative and modern information and communication systems as well as a practical con-sulting-platform for enterprises and individuals, who would like to expand in the electronic commerce.