RSTO have delivered against Economic / Development Agency remits since the formation of the company. Although we pride ourselves on our innovation, cutting-edge approach and getting our hands dirty with frontline SME support activities we have been obliged to implement and enforce ever more rigorous quality management processes.

Through our delivery of the Online Trading Programme we have been accountable for quality, agency targets and output criteria. This alignment with Enterprise Agency standards enables RSTO to intuitively integrate systems and deliverables into our interventions that meet and exceed the expectations of Enterprise Agency stakeholders.

RSTO have an intricate knowledge of the sometimes difficult brands and values issues that arise when working with geographically dispersed stakeholder groupings. With the Electronic Payments Tool we have delivered an intervention identity that carefully represents the key elements of each stakeholder while maintaining a customer-centric delivery format.

Content too has to achieve the highest professional standards when being authored on behalf of Enterprise Agencies. RSTO have produced eBusiness fact-sheets, seminars, learning modules and audio / video eLearning modules that are widely dispersed through the Scottish Enterprise Network.

The systems we put in place do exceed the requirements of our customers and use technology itself to underpin quality and success. The online workflow developed to record participant activity and generate outcome metrics for the Online Trading Programme has evolved to identify key adoption milestones and failure points that influence future iterations of the programme.

Online Trading Programme: is a catalyst for small businesses to overcome their resistance to online trading by encouraging take-up of entry level eCommerce solutions and payment gateways through learning, hands-on experience and expert advice.

SMEs experience specific failure with the selection of ePayment and eCommerce solutions and this policy initiative overcomes these barriers to achieve online trading outcomes for volumes of SMEs in the deployment area. The programme has modelled and implemented online trading scenarios for over 500 SMEs.

This initiative has Scottish Enterprise Accreditation and is aligned to Smart Successful Scotland - in particular Connecting Scotland (published initially by the SE Network, June 2000 and updated in November 2001). www.scottish-enterprise.com

Electronic Payments Tool (EPT): is a benchmark portal that diagnoses specific SME online payment scenarios against the actual costs of the solutions available in the UK. The portal was developed from 6 months of research into the payment structures and costs of over 20 UK ePayment solutions. The SME enters their transaction volumes and transactions sizes to generate an industry approved cost comparison of each solution available to them. Further calculations can then be undertaken to filter results by currency, shopping cart compatibility and platform dependency. The portal was fully funded by the Department of Trade and Industry and Scottish Enterprise and its objective is to increase the adoption of ePayment solutions by SMEs. The EPT is the most successful online eBusiness diagnostic tools in the UK and has modelled over 100,000 SME ePayment adoption scenarios to date. www.electronic-payments.co.uk

To enquire about factsheet / seminars authoring, intervention development, public speaking requirements (eCom, ePay, crm, online marketing, adoption processes) please use the contact details to the right or click here

Find out more:
www.tradeonlineproject.com