On Tuesday, 25 September the European Consulting Network (ECN) held its first Members’ Meeting in Greece at the Grand Bretagne Hotel in central Athens. The informal meeting was attended by 50 consultants and professional advisors.
Mr Philip Ammerman, Managing Director of ECN, opened the meeting with a presentation of EU funding opportunities, focussing on direct funding from the central EU institutions. ECN specialises in this funding, and in its first year of operations has posted nearly 2000 service procurement notices with a budget total of EUR 20 billion.
The presentation also outlined ECN’s strategy for developing expertise and winning projects. ECN recommends establishing a core competency and distributing this across multiple funding opportunities. This long-term, focussed approach to proposal writing helps individual consultants to invest in developing their own brand and enhance their status as a recognised expert.
A tour of the different tender opportunities, including open and restricted tenders, grant programmes, and framework contracts showed how professional advisors can gain experience in different tender types, leading to invaluable experience as project evaluators for the EU.
The ECN platform services and applications, including procurement analytics, the tender tracking list, subcontracting opportunities, recruitment, the networking application, as well as the corporate profiles and individual CVs, formed the backdrop of the ECN presentation.
The last part of the programme, an informal discussion and networking session, lasted well over an hour.
ECN would like to thank everyone for their input. We look forward to working with you in the future.