Integrated Multilingual E-services for Business Communication (SE703)
Funded by South-East Finland - Russia ENPI 2007-2013

Objective of the project

To ensure successful business communication between Russian and Finnish SMEs in the Programme area in order to meet the needs of commercial co-operation. To facilitate Russian-Finnish intercultural business interaction and ensure the level of proficiency sufficient for adequate understanding of specific situations.

Main activities

- Carrying out 2 international seminars based on the results of benchmarking activities and feasibility studies; consultations with representatives of the target groups; - Creation of conjoint methodology for integration of customer oriented multilingual e-services for business interaction, emergency communication and tourism based on the results of benchmarking and feasibility study; - Integration of multilingual e-services for business interaction, emergency communication and tourism infrastructure; - Testing the e-services in different communication situations, including business matchmaking focused on different target groups; - Drawing up an evaluation report of the testing results; - Compiling the recommendations for using the multilingual e-services; - Carrying out 2 international training seminars on the use of multilingual e-services for business interaction, emergency communication and tourism infrastructure; - Project management and reporting.

Achievements

The final results of the implemented activities: user needs and behaviour were studied in the benchmarking analysis and a feasibility study was concluded in order to develop suitable multilingual solutions. A significant amount of the planned end users in Russia and Finland took part in these evaluation processes. Multilingual e-services were developed and are accessible via PCs, mobiles and tablets. Additionally, there was a pilot for a machine translation service for callers with both a Russian and a Finnish phone number. Project actors have also issued the EU–Russia Project Co-operation Glossary which includes comprehensive coverage of the project management vocabulary used regularly in project-related correspondence in English, Finnish and Russian. Numerous seminars, conferences and workshops were also held to provide information on the project results.