New course for SME managers offers route to online success

Managers of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are being given the chance to take advantage of the boom in e-commerce. The Management School, Imperial College, has been awarded funding by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) to develop a new course entitled 'Entrepreneurial use of IT for SME Business Management'.

The Management School and the DfEE recognise that there is a shortfall in innovative IT skills within SMEs and that many companies are failing to maximise their business potential through a lack of expertise to exploit the available technology.

The new course of Master Classes is designed to enable SME managers to be more entrepreneurial in their approach to using electronic communications technologies. The course will address the key issues facing most SME business managers in terms of how to obtain optimum business benefit from current and evolving technologies. It will teach them how to choose the right technology and how to implement new technology-based approaches such as e-commerce and mobile working.

Participants to the course, which runs from October 1999, will attend ten weekly one-day Master Classes, including site visits to centres of excellence to see technology in action.

For further information please contact:

Dr Monica Seeley
Course Director
Tel: 0181 458 9040

Notes to editors:

1. For an application form call 0181 458 9040.

2. The Imperial College Management School was rated second overall in the UK in the Financial Times Survey of Business Schools (25/1/99) and also second in Europe for research and the best value for money in the world. Further information about the Management School can be found on its website at: http://www.ms.ic.ac.uk/

3. Dr Monica Seeley is Course Director. She is a visiting fellow at the Management School and has over fifteen years experience as a management consultant specialising in helping senior executives to derive more benefits from their IT investments.

4. Professor David Targett is the academic advisor to the course. He is Professor of Information Management at the Management School.