The ABC project will design and develop specialist support materials to encourage competitiveness and innovation amongst SMEs. The project will enable SMEs to benchmark their competitive and innovative position against their peers and across a range of key indicators both on a national and transnational level.Initial activity will include a training needs analysis of SMEs across the partner countries, thus allowing the benchmarking of SMEs across EU Member States through a specialist multi-lingual website (EN, DE, PT & ES) which is to be developed within the project.A further multilingual CD-Rom will be created for use by both small businesses and SME support organisations covering all issues related to implementing innovation within their business.A final transnational conference will be held and specialist publicity materials developed to raise awareness of the work undergone within the sector and pilot training and testing of the materials will be undergone with an initial 50 business advisers/trainers working with SMEs.