Fomento San Sebastian | City of San Sebastian
The Economic Development Department, through Fomento San Sebastian, is working with the retail and hospitality sectors of the city to identify and analyse what are the main challenges and opportunities our local businesses are facing as regards their digital transformation. One of the measures that will be developed and tested in this process is the online Digital Maturity Assessment Tool (DMAT) which, located on a web portal, will enable the businesses to get a view of their digital profile and estimate the measures they have to follow in order to advance in their digitalisation based on their real needs and resources.
The participating businesses will have to respond to a questionnaire which will measure a series of dimensions: strategy, business culture, organisation, processes, technology, risk, innovation, investment capacity and customers and partners. In addition, it will help to improve and control the digital transformation journey of the businesses, and offer them the possibility to benchmark with other establishments of similar characteristics.
The initial steps of the pilot project have been taken in April and will be integrated into the DSS Market Plaza project, the city’s large online platform which seeks to bring retail and hospitality sectors ́ businesses together under a single showcase in order to position the local establishments. As well as the participating establishments, the retail and hospitality associations of the city will also benefit from this tool, and the authorities, who will have a unified tool to plan policies related to the improvement of digital transformation support services.
DEVISE, is a European project managed in the city by Fomento San Sebastián and co-financed by the European Union within Interreg Europe programme. It seeks to respond to the challenge of promoting the digitalisation of strategic business sectors. A challenge which is also being addressed by other regions and partner cities in the project. The aim is, on the one hand, to exploit the potential offered by companies who provide digitalisation services and, on the other, analyse the needs and demands of the businesses in these strategic sectors, retail and hospitality in our case.
To this end, the project follows an innovative intersectoral approach, involving all the relevant stakeholders in the digital transformation process in order to analyse the current context by learning from other European Union regions. Defining, in addition, actions that integrate the lessons learnt and enabling the alignment between the supply and demand of digitalisation services. In the case of San Sebastian, this has been structured through an Action Plan which, as well as the new assessment tool to measure the degree of digital maturity, includes the following measures:
- Vouchers Programme for the implementation of digital solutions and applications.
- Awareness and digital training programme.
- Technology Consultancy Programme to boost the digitalisation processes.
Fomento San Sebastian is developing this pilot action entitled online Digital Maturity Assessment Tool (DMAT) in cooperation with DEVISE partners Northern and Western Regional Assembly (Ireland) and Business Agency Association (Bulgaria).
Written by Fomento San Sebastian.
