UNIDO Pharos training workshop in Voronezh, Russian Federation The UNIDO Pharos training workshop for senior management of enterprises and business consultants took place in Voronezh, Russia during 10-12 November 2008. Its implementation followed the agreement between the Administration of Voronezh Region, Russian Federation and UNIDO (Vienna) in 2007. The workshop became a part of new UNIDO Project for Russia supervised by Mr. Yuri Akhvlediani, UNIDO. The event took place in the Voronezh Institute of High Technologies and was attended by 35 participants from different industrial enterprises and consulting organizations. 
The trainees were welcomed by Mr. Sergey Posledov, Deputy Manager, Economic Development Department and Mr. Maxim Trofimenko, UNIDO Project Office in Voronezh, opening the workshop. The speakers reviewed the project history, the importance of effective preparing of regional enterprises to investment and modernization programmes accordingly to the best international practices. 
The workshop was run by Mr. Serge Golovanov, UNIDO International Consultant and Director of EPIC, GOLEM IMS GMBH, Vienna, Austria. The training session began with overview of approaches to enterprise performance management, measurement and benchmarking, its strong relation to strategic planning. The importance of these issues for sustainable and productive business development in competitive business environment and financial analysis of enterprise capacity for investment was outlined. The details and examples were explained why UNIDO Pharos software suite provides entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers with unique simple and cost effective solution for evaluation of business results, its presenting to prospective investors, continuous improvement and developing best practices. 
The programme included review of case studies developed within previous UNIDO upgrading programmes in India, Colombia and Lebanon. The trainees positively evaluated the workshop implementation during the final discussion underlining its usefulness, simplicity, easiness of Pharos benchmarking reports. In particular the reports introduce the basis for non-biased evaluation and selection of enterprises for investments and modernization programmes.
Several participants and consultants outlined that the UNIDO Pharos suite and its methodology is affordable for Russian enterprises. If adapted to Russian business environment it can be effectively used to facilitate learning, investment and modernization programmes for enterprise management improving enterprise capacity for sustainable growth, to cope with increased financial risks and to present its results to national and international investors. 
Each participant was provided with CD-ROM containing the complete set of workshop materials and UNIDO Pharos software (demo version). The participants received UNIDO Certificates after the end of the workshop.
Voronezh, November 2008 
Square of Peter the Great 
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