Alpha Plus Consulting developed a unique “System of Indicators for Evaluation of State-Supported SME Development Programs”. The toolkit is characterized by the three following key features:

- It is a collection of evaluation indicators that are necessary for and specifically relevant to government supported SME development programs and interventions;

- The system is not bound to any specific type of program or intervention. Neither it is bound to any specific country or region; and

- It is a set of practical guidelines applicable during both independent evaluations and in self-evaluations by program managers

The first characteristic means that the proposed system is a combination of indicators which i) would be necessary for the government to assess performance of its supported programs and interventions, as opposed to purely business indicators. For example, any government is likely to be interested in development of clusters and generation of jobs along with the development of SME business indicators, such as turnover, profits etc. The proposed system starts at an individual small or medium-sized enterprise level but goes further up to the sectoral, regional and industry development levels. On the other hand, the system leaves out those evaluation indicators, which are inherent and interesting only at the businesses unit level. The second characteristic of the proposed system is its universal nature. Effectively this means that the indicators can be applied for most types of programs and interventions aimed at SME development in any country, obviously with prior adaptation of benchmarks and scales applicable for each case. And the last main characteristic of the system is that it is organized in the form of practical guidelines applicable during both independent evaluations and in self-evaluations by program managers. This does not necessarily mean that all indicators proposed by the system have to be applied in all cases. The selection and further adaptation, especially as far as the benchmarks and scales of measurement go, should be done by the specific manager or evaluator for the specific program or intervention. Once the selection is done though, the system provides practical guidelines for collecting primary information, computation and application of the indicators. After the individual indicators are applied and certain parameters computed, an overall program rating methodology is proposed based on the results of each applied indicator application.