As an additional source of expertise, there excists a flexible competence network in the project, complementary to the stable panel. This offers the possibility to consider emergent topics and current results in a quick and detailed manner. This balance in the information gathering process assures the availability of future-orientated and at the same time reliable information in order to promote an inspiring prolific debate within the service research and for the service practice.

Apart from the extended competence network, the project MARS cooperates with the Statistical Office of the European Communities EUROSTAT. EUROSTAT is the central official Statistical Office of the European Communities and operates in Europe in the preparation of world wide statistics by order of the OECD. Moreover, EUROSTAT runs own research activities in the field of services and is involved in the further development of the NACE-Code. In addition to the qualitative results macro-economic data are processed in the project MARS by using the cooperation with EUOSTAT so as to set impulses to an inhancement on the data bases on the macro level.