We survey to
serve you better

ITEA focuses on customer orientation; it is part of our DNA. During project reviews, the project’s success depends partly on its involvement of and verification with customers. Customers are even regularly part of ITEA projects and the entire ITEA event approach is geared to being closer to the customer, with the annual thematic ITEA customer workshops and participation in customer fairs such as the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) and the Cyber ​​Security & Cloud Expo.

Essentially, the ITEA project partners are, in addition to important building blocks, also “customers” of the ITEA programme; they use the services, such as the (network) events like the ITEA PO Days, the interface, like the ITEA project idea tool and Community website, and we work together with them on the ITEA (project) promotion, including the ITEA project leaflets, the ITEA Magazine and the Impact stream.

As they work ‘in the field’, these customers have wishes and ideas that are important, from which ITEA can learn, improve and innovate. To this end we ask time and effort from the ITEA project partners to share their valuable information with us; after every event or stage in an ITEA Call for projects (e.g. PO Submission, FPP Submission, start-up and completion) we ask about their experience, ideas and wishes. This requested time and effort is only well spent if something is really done with the results. Although not every idea can be implemented (immediately) and there are numerous different opinions, rest assured that many improvements have been achieved thanks to the ITEA Community’s input.

To give a clear example; participation in SCEWC was inspired by the surveys conducted after our Co-summits and the Digital Innovation Forum (DIF). Every year we received feedback such as “This type of event should attract more people outside the community”, “There is not enough outside participation and it feels to be much more like an event for the people that are already engaged in projects” and “Not enough potential customers”. ITEA has always encouraged projects to involve customers but has not always succeed in achieving that at its own events. That is why the thematic ITEA customer workshop was first set up 6 years ago, in which customers from a specific theme were brought into contact with solution providers from the ITEA Community and specific customer challenges were converted into customer-oriented R&D projects. That was a success; the events were very well rated - with a record score of 4.23 on a scale of 5.0. But it wasn’t enough; during the ITEA Events, the demand for more customers and outsiders remained high. That is why ITEA changed course in 2019 and went to the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona with 12 projects. This experience yielded many learning points, but 88% of the participants that had participated to the ITEA Events before thought this new approach was better (and the other 12% thought it was similar): “Participating in SCEWC helped us shape the presentation and parts of the product that we developed in the project”. Through this successful participation, we will continue to participate in various thematic customer fairs in the future. In 2020, besides the SCEWC, preparations for participating in the Cyber ​​Security Expo in Amsterdam are already ongoing.