Friday, June 1, 2012

Euroalert presents its Social Media Newsroom

In order to make the cooperation with press, media and others interested parties easier, Euroalert has created a Social Media Newsroom with specific material published. In this section of our website, we provide you a Press Kit for Media, different ways to contact us and, among other interesting things, the social media that we use to communicate our services of information about the European Union and our competitive intelligence products on public tenders. In addition to this, we also provide you a sample of our  past participation in different media.

A few months ago, Euroalert presented its extension into the Google+ circles. This network is one of the ways to contact us to know more aboutour products and to potential collaborations. Other social networks that Eurolert commonly uses, are also included in our Social Media Newsroom. 

Euroalert is open to all kinds of collaborations with the media and other stakeholders. For example, did you know that Euroalert provides EU breaking news through a widget? We offer this personalized service for only €30 a month. For this service and many others that may be of your interest, you can phone us +32 2 318 03 01 or use our Contact page. We hope our Social Media Newsroom is useful for you and we thank you in advance to help us to improve it.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Euroalert analyses with exporting companies how to get the most from competitive intelligence tools based on public procurement

As you already know Euroalert provides competitive intelligence tools based on public procurement information which help companies from all sectors to access new business opportunities. Being in contact with companies and sharing with them our experience in the management of these type of tools is without any doubt one of the most satisfying parts of our job. It is for that reason that since Euroalert was invited to be in the panel of a seminar about public procurement opportunities for Irish construction companies organised by Enterprise Ireland a couple of years ago, it is always a pleasure for us to take part in seminars and workshops whenever one of our partners invites us to talk about these opportunities with their businesses.

The last occasion was on 26 April at a seminar organised by the Spanish Association for the Internationalisation of the Electronics, Information Technology and Telecommunications Companies (Secartys). In this seminar we briefly went through the current situation of public procurement in the European Union and discussed how competitive intelligence techniques are an important contribution to any company's strategy. We also analysed how key information can be obtained from public procurement and government contract notices by using competitive intelligence tools such as Euroalert's and revised a few examples adapted to their own sector.

In Secartys' website you can access the programme of the seminar about the use of competitive intelligence tools and techniques in the field of public procurement in the European Union (Spanish version). You can also have a look here at the presentation we used during this seminar.
If you represent a trade association, a chamber of commerce, an export promotion agency or any other kind of organization working with exporting companies, and you think it could be interesting for them to know how they can use these tools to make their businesses grow, do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail or through Euroalert profiles in Twitter, Facebook or Google+. It will be a pleasure to share our experience and help them to achieve their objective for growth.

Friday, May 11, 2012

New App to be informed of the latest news and press calls from the European Commission in Spanish

Did you know that the Representation of the European Commission in Spain launched an app in collaboration with Euroalert? You can now download for iPhone and Android a mobile app where you will be able to will find the latest European news. The app lets you see the news of the European Commission, European events taking place in Spain as well as the press calls for journalists interested in covering European affairs.

In addition to this app, you can also add this information to your personalized iGoogle gadget. With the app and the gadget, the European Commission intends to make available its activities in Spain to the public and provide to Spanish citizens a quick and easy access to European information. Francisco Fonseca, head of the Representation of the European Commission in Spain highlighted at the moment of the launching last November, that in this way, citizens will get European information without having to actively search through the new uses that are being imposed. 

Euroalert team is very proud to have participated as a developer on this project. Also today we express our satisfaction with the number of downloads that the application is having on both iPhone and Android because it means what is useful for citizens.

As you know applications can be downloaded for free from the App Store and Google Play Market and from the website of the Representation of the European Commission in Spain and of course, from the Euroalert online store. Your comments, tweets, +1' s, likes, reviews and ratings to the app will help us to further improve its implementation, making it more useful for you all.

Monday, May 7, 2012

9 of May: Celebrate the Europe Day with Euroalert

Since Robert Schuman delivered his famous 'Schuman Declaration' on 9th of May 1950, Europeans celebrated that day the Europe Day. This statement officially has started what is today known as the European Union, but back then it started the European Coal and Steel Community. 

Although 9th of May is not a national holiday in any of the 27 Member States, as you can see on the calendar that we created, Representations of the European institutions such as the Representation of the European Commission in Spain, they do celebrate that day events to promote the European spirit. Among these activities, the European Commission in Spain has made available a mobile application  for Android and iPhone, and with the collaboration of Euroalert, so as not to miss any detail of the celebrations and that also allows you to know the latest news related to the EU.

In Euroalert, most of the content is related to the European Union. You can access to the EU breaking news from our News section and select the specific topic that interests you. You can also install a widget on your website with this news and customize it. On the other hand, if the information you need is related to financing and business opportunities in the EU, you can check the grants issued by the European institutions and also adapt them to your web through a widget that you can customize. Regarding the business opportunities that are published in the EU, among other competitive intelligence products, we "alert you" on the public tenders relevant to your business through our alert system 10ders Alerts. We can not forget the European legislation that is published daily in the EU Official Journal (OJEU). You can also follow it in Euroalert through our newsletters. In the coming weeks, we will announce important developments in our products competitive intelligence in public tenders that surely will be very useful for you.

This is the way that Euroalert has to celebrate the 9th of May, Europe Day with you: bringing you the European information you may need and what else you might be interested. If you want more information about any of our products you can visit our online store or contact us via e-mail or via Twitter and Facebook.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Euroalert releases and shares for free the calendar on public holidays in the whole EU in 2012

The European Union publishes every year in the EU Official Journal (OJEU) the national public holidays that take place in Member States with information provided by the countries themselves.

The calendar is published in a PDF format into the OJEU which is not as useful as it could for businesses or citizens. For example a SME that wants to expand its market to another EU country will surely need to know in advance, in a fast and simple way, the public holidays in each EU country. European citizens that organize a vacation travel within the EU would also be interested in knowing in advance if their scheduled days coincide with a public holiday. It is unlikely that in any of these cases, users would look for the information in the Official Journal.

For this reason in Euroalert, we have decided to transform this information into data that can be easily used or re-used, i.e. into an iCalendar that can be read from Google Calendar or from many other calendar applications developed for SmartPhones, tablets or computers. We'd like to thank you for your trust in our services and that's why we have released the EU Public Holiday Calendar with a license that allows you to use it completely for free.

In order to enjoy this calendar of public holidays in the EU, you only have to download it from Euroalert and, if you have any further question, you can contact us by email or via our Twitter profile and through the Euroalert Facebook page.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Euroalert.net speaks about Competitive Intelligence and Public Procurement at Bureau Veritas Business School

On February 23 we had the pleasure to take part in a webinar organized by Bureau Veritas Business School and talk about Competitive Intelligence and Public Procurement. It was a great opportunity to share with all the participants Euroalert.net experience in creating value-added Competitive Intelligence services based in public procurement especially designed for SMEs active in exportation.

Over 45 minutes we went through the current situation in European public procurement market and how Competitive Intelligence techniques can be applied in order to enhance the commercial strategies of any company. It was also the case to explain how there are many tools beyond public contracts alerts, such as lists of successful bidders, which can help companies to translate a huge amount of data into useful and manageable knowledge to be used in strategic decisions.

You can watch the video of the webinar entitled “Commercial Intelligence and Public Procurement” at Bureau Veritas Business School on-line platform (this time there is only a Spanish version). You can also have a look at the presentation we used for the session.
There will be similar seminars and workshops over this year, where Euroalert.net Team will deal with some of the ways to take full advantage of all the information and opportunities brought by public contract announcements. If you want to keep track of all these events, you can do it through our Twitter profile and at Euroalert.net Facebook page.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Euroalert experience at the Open Government event celebrated at the EOI

Last week, we had the opportunity to present our work as a company powered by open data, i.e. a company that uses data from public sector to create information services to companies across Europe.  As usual, we contribute with our experience to the first #RunOgov: "Open Government: Challenge and Opportunity" event held on 28 February at the "Escuela de Organización Industrial (EOI)" organized by the "Club de Innovación" and sponsored by Telefónica.

It was a pleasure to share a very interesting day with leading people in the Spanish open data community and with others who are bursting with strength and also, to help make the community more stronger -at least, a little more. Throughout the morning, we learned that, Neelie Kroes, Vice president of the European Commission answered in her blog to the campaign for a single Open Data licence in the European Union. Of course it was something very commented among the attendees, having regard that the campaign had its origin in Spain and it is a great example of Open Government.

At the event, it was also discussed very important issues as the announcement made by the Spanish government on its works in a Spanish Digital Agenda. Given Euroalert involvement in the European Digital Agenda, we look forward to it because it should mean a boost for our digital economy. Besides, it was also relevant the announcement made by the Director General of Analysis and Planning from Castilla y Leon (Spanish region), on the upcoming launch of an Open Government strategy for this region. Within this strategy, it will be launched an Open Data portal that we hope we can use it to extend the governments contracts data, that feed our international market intelligence services.

As usual, we provide you the presentation we made at the event.
We also put at your disposal all the resources created by the “Club de la Innovation” about the event, such as the summary of the speakers presentations and the videos in the media library of the EOI (or in Youtube) since all sessions were streamed. There is also a photo gallery on Flickr and of course, you can check all what it what said at the event through Twitter at hashtag #runogov. We hope you find interesting all the material provided in order to learn more about Euroalert and the exciting world of Open Data.