The Business Services sector accounts for 11.7% of the EU economy. Between 2013 and 2025, the sector will create about a third of all employment opportunities, and 6 to 20% of the services provided in the EU have a transnational dimension.

According to Eurostat OECD statistics, 80% of start-ups in Europe survive the first financial year, but only 44% remain on the market for more than five years. The crucial reason for the early failure of SMEs is lack of planning, while only 30% of SMEs have a plan to deal with risks and dangers.

The main reasons behind it are the lack of awareness and understanding of risks and threats and the degree of their exposure to these, the lack of knowledge on how Risk Management can be implemented in their company and the lack of resources (either as internal knowledge that could be used or as a capability to use external experts).

We provide our services supporting the needs of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the specific area of Resilience Management, helping them to address their Risk Management, Information Security and Business Continuity concerns, and to help SMEs achieve an improved level of resilience in accordance with their individual needs, capabilities and invested effort and resources.

We have built the CASSANDRA methodology, as the key outcome of an EU-funded programm, a unique approach aiming to assist the owners or managers of SMEs in a refined, simple, straightforward and practical way.

CASSANDRA Methodology heps SMEs acquire the necessary awareness and knowledge of Resilience Management, to understand in context how Risk Management relates to their specific business needs and, as a further step, to use the material and methodology provided to construct and implement an effective Risk Management Strategy (including issues of Business Continuity, Information Security and Cyber Risks as well), founded on informed decisions and a fit-for-purpose approach.

The SMEs Service Sector is the enterprises target group of the CASSANDRA project. This includesbut is not limited to  the following services firms:

• Legal services
• Accounting, auditing and tax services
• market and economic research; Surveys and statistics
• Business and management consulting and related services
• Office-support services
• Recruitment Services
• Services of detectives and security services
• Printing services and related printing companies

The CASSANDRA users target group includes mainly entrepreneurs, managing directors, executives, employees with responsibility. Typically, any company employee can use the CASSANDRA Methodology and benefit from it.

CASSANDRA priciples and methodology is not limited to Business Services but applies to almost all SMEs sectors.