The University of Vigo and the Union of Cooperatives AGACA presented SAVES (Virtual Assistance System for Cooperatives and Social Economy), a tool that allows easy and fast consultation and comparison of socioeconomic data provided by Galician cooperatives to various official sources. The design and implementation of this assistant are part of a project carried out by researchers from the University of Vigo, funded by the Eusumo Network, and with the collaboration in data supply from the Registry of Cooperatives of Galicia and the technical team of AGACA in data analysis.
The presentation of the new platform, which includes three different tools (SAVES Agri, SAVES Entrepeneur, and SAVESCoop), was led by the University of Vigo profesor, María José Cabaleiro Casal, and Higinio Mougán Bouzón, the manager of the Union of Cooperatives AGACA. They were accompanied at the beginning of the event by the Regional Minister for Employment Promotion and Equality, Elena Rivo. The regional minister reaffirmed the Xunta's defense of social economy as "a model of entrepreneurship that provides employment, autonomy, and helps revitalize rural areas, settle populations, and create quality employment tied to the territory." Rivo also mentioned that the Galician government is designing a new social economy strategy and is preparing the new Cooperative Law, for which the new SAVES tool will be very useful, as it allows understanding economic and financial keys in the field of agrarian cooperatives.
SAVES Agri, SAVES Entrepreneur and SAVES Coop
Within the SAVES framework, the SAVES Agri tool focuses on the figures of the agri-food sector and arises from the SAVES Report on Galician Agrarian Cooperatives. SAVES Digital Tool for Cooperative Entrepreneurship in the Agrarian Sector, developed by the University of Vigo and AGACA and coordinated by María José Cabaleiro Casal and Carlos Iglesias Malvido (UVigo), Higinio Mougán Bouzón (AGACA). Its main objective is to promote the visibility of the cooperative movement in Galicia through a public access tool that shows the reality of the figures of Galician agrarian cooperatives. The platform includes two functions: on the one hand, basic figures, which show the results for a study group, and another, a comparison tool, which allows for confronting a study group with a reference group.
Another tool offered by SAVES is the SAVES Entrepreneur simulator, of particular interest to people who wish to undertake new projects, as it allows entering their economic forecasts and comparing them with cooperatives active in the market. SAVES Entrepeneur was coordinated by the professors at UVigo, María José Cabaleiro Casal and Carlos Iglesias Malvido, with the aim to provide cooperatives, or people who wish to undertake new projects, with a digital tool that allows them to improve their business plan. As in the case of SAVES Agri, there are also two functions: basic figures and the comparison tool.
The third part of this project is SavesCoop, a tool that arises from the SavesEntrepeneur project. After registration, it allows comparing the real data of a cooperative with those of a group of cooperatives of similar characteristics. This facilitates a reference regarding the indicators of economic and financial situation for the cooperative.
In parallel, from these projects, three reports have also emerged. The first collects the basic figures of Galician agrarian cooperativism; the second shows the presence of women in Galician agrarian cooperativism; and the third presents an economic and financial analysis of Galician agrarian cooperatives.
News published in the Diario da Universidade de Vigo on October 24, 2023