Financial Agreement

What do the companies participating in the CXC have to present as administrative justification?  We are thinking of organizing a CXC mission to Portugal and we are wondering if we (cluster) can pay for the flights and hotels, and then send them an invoice with these expenses.

The companies must pay for their expenses. The VOP undertakes to pay to the VO the financial assistance as a lump sum of 390€ (3 days) or 780€ (5 days) in one payment within 10 days after the completion of the exchange upon the submission of the relevant closing report of the exchange by the VO and its respective validation by the VOP, and the receipt of relevant evidence from the VO that the exchange has taken place (e.g. boarding passes, travel and accommodation invoices).

Participation Rules

If an organisation/company is a member of a "Business Networks", can take part in the exchange activities?

Is it possible to participate in more than one exchange? Can we include the participant SMEs of HOP as participants?

An exchange can always be counted once towards partnership KPIs. This rule is particularly important when the Partnerships that manage the Visiting Organisation´s (VOP) and Host Organisation´s  (HOP) profiles are different (VOP and HOP are different in an exchange). 

The exchange is only counted towards the partnership´s KPIs that organises the exchange and pays the financial assistance to the visiting organisation. This means that an exchange can only be counted towards the VOP´s KPIs (as the VOP is in charge of paying the financial assistance) and not towards the HOP´s KPIs. This counting system is also applied to the virtual exchanges, even if no financial assistance is involved.  

Eligibility in CXC 

The participant SMEs need to register in ECCP or can register directly in the IT Tool?

“To take part in the scheme, all participants have to be linked to a validated Cluster Organisation profile on the ECCP, with the exception of Business networks”. It means that an organisation is only eligible if it is profiled on ECCP (in the case of cluster organisations) or is a member of a cluster organisation profiled on ECCP (eligible cluster organisation members are SMEs and scaling-up support organisations, as indicated in the quality manual). These rules do not apply to business networks who are also eligible in CXC.  

Final Report

"The Visiting Organisation agrees to: ", do we already have the specified format for the report? If I was reading this as a prospective visitor I would like to know if this represents 5 minutes or five hours effort from my part... On the Quality Commitment is stated that they have 7 days to present a report under a defined format and I would like to have a more concrete idea on what is expected in case, they ask the question. 

We don’t need to prepare a specific survey there’s a template for the final activity report

• ANNEX 2 for Host organization 
• ANNEX 3 for visiting organizations 

In any case it's only a simple questionnaire and takes only few minutes to fill in. 

Matches

The score of the profile must be over 82? Can we choose only the green ones?

The score is only an indication of the “affinity” between two profiles, it is possible to match with profiles that have any score. 

Is it possible to group profiles along different days? Or do we have to group all of them at the same time?

We understand you refer to creating a group of exchanges. Indeed, it is possible to add exchanges of different visiting organisations to a group at different times as long as they are in a draft status. (meaning no contracts – commitment to quality - have been signed).

FAQ ClusterXchange