Innovative financial controlling service development, unleashing cutting-edge controlling solutions for SMEs

Desired outcome

Our company offers 360° financial services starting from accounting, through financial controlling to outsourced CFO and advisory services. Our clients are mainly small and medium sized companies.

The goal of this challenge is to craft modular controlling services that can be seamlessly integrated across diverse financial ecosystems, ensuring efficiency and reliability.

Initial Problem Description

In the dynamic landscape of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the financial management ecosystem is marked by a series of intricate challenges that demand innovative solutions. Participants are challenged to create solutions that are cost-effective, easy to implement, and capable of enhancing the financial resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Challenges to be Solved:
1. Resource-Efficient solutions: SMEs often struggle with limited resources. Teams are challenged to create controlling services that streamline financial processes for SMEs, ensuring cost-effectiveness and accuracy.

2. Financial Visibility: Given resource constraints, SMEs often lack comprehensive financial visibility. Participants are tasked with creating controlling services that provide cost-effective solutions for enhancing financial visibility and decision-making capabilities for SMEs using even new technologies (AI, automatized processes etc).

The goal is solving these challenges, urging participants to deliver innovative, standardized solutions that will significantly impact and empower the financial controlling landscape for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Context

Currently there are only few truly standardized „boxed” financial controlling services on the market. We would like to offer widely useable tools and solutions for small and medium sized businesses that can help their company to thrive.

Development areas
1. Financial Health Assessment Tools: Develop interactive tools or calculators that clients can download to assess their financial health, analyze key metrics, and identify areas for improvement. This should involve features such as tutorials and guide on how to use.

2. Provide tools and downloadable templates for budgeting, financial statements, cash flow projections, and other essential financial documents. Design tools that enable SMEs to create accurate and dynamic budgets, offering forecasting capabilities to enhance strategic financial planning and decision-making. This should involve features such as tutorials and guide on how to use.

3. Cash Flow Optimization: Develop solutions that assist SMEs in optimizing their cash flow, providing real-time insights and predictive analytics to ensure liquidity and financial stability. This should involve features such as tutorials and guide on how to use.

4. Financial Education for SME Owners: Implement features that provide financial education and insights to SME owners, empowering them with the knowledge needed to make informed decisions about their business finances.

5. Collaborative Financial Platforms: Create platforms that facilitate collaboration and communication between different departments within SMEs, fostering better coordination for financial control measures.

6. Access to Capital: Address the challenge of SMEs accessing capital by incorporating features that help businesses prepare for funding, demonstrate financial stability, and connect with potential investors or lenders.

These areas aim to provide a comprehensive approach to enhancing financial controls for small and medium-sized enterprises, covering various aspects of their financial operations and management. Our goal is to develop all of the above areas to complete a comprehensive financial support tool for SME owners and managers. We welcome all professionals who can provide partial or complete solutions and ideas in this journey.

The above list encompasses a diverse array of use cases, acknowledging that the financial controlling challenges faced by SMEs are nuanced and multifaceted. Participants are encouraged to consider the specific contexts within which their solutions will operate, tailoring their innovations to the unique needs and operational realities of small and medium-sized enterprises in various sectors. By doing so, the quest aims to foster the development of standardized solutions that have a meaningful impact on the financial resilience and success of SMEs across different industries.

Connection to cross-cutting areas

In the context of this challenge, the cross-cutting areas most connected to the Digitalization and Industry 4.0. Here is how these areas are particularly relevant:

1. Digitalization: The challenge inherently revolves around developing innovative controlling services, which, by their nature, involve leveraging digital technologies. Digitalization is at the core of enhancing financial processes for SMEs. Participants are encouraged to design solutions that embrace digital tools, automation, and data analytics to streamline financial operations, provide real-time insights, and improve overall efficiency. The goal is to catalyze a digital transformation in financial management for SMEs, making processes more accessible, responsive, and technologically advanced.

2. Industry 4.0: by emphasizing the use of cutting-edge technologies to revolutionize financial control for SMEs. Solutions that incorporate AI for analytics and automation for process optimization are encouraged. The objective is to bring about a paradigm shift in how financial processes are managed within SMEs, aligning with the broader Industry 4.0 framework.

Input

Based on our experience SMEs are often short in innovation and initiatives considering their financial evaluation. They are following the trends and technology in their respective field but they lack on focus on financial visibility and financial strategies. We would like to offer them innovative standardized solutions that could help not only their day-to-day operations but also their long-term strategies.

Expectations

We expect participants to deliver innovative controlling services that go beyond conventional approaches and solutions (like accounting BS and PnL) that can be tailor-made for users business model (f.e monthly extended business report) and prioritize the user experience, ensuring that SME owners and managers can easily navigate and derive value from the controlling services.

We encourage participants to design solutions that are scalable and adaptable to the diverse needs of SMEs across different industries and sizes. Solutions should be flexible enough to accommodate growth and changing business environments. The ability to foster collaboration and data flow within the broader business ecosystem is key.

We encourage solutions to include educational components that enhance financial literacy for SME owners and managers. This could involve features such as tutorials, guidance, and resources to empower users in making informed financial decisions.

Desired Team Profile

Young professionals with a solid background in finance and business analysis bring essential domain knowledge to the team. We also welcome young professionals with experience in cloud-based marketing communication and business solutions who can initiate ground-breaking business development ideas and solutions, also supporting the first steps of the market entry.

Additional Information

We work with SMEs across different industries and sizes so it is important that the financial controlling services are flexible and adaptable. We invite you to embark on a transformative journey to develop cutting-edge, standardized "boxed" controlling services that redefine the future of financial management for SMEs.

Related Keywords

• data-driven financial solutions
• finance
• financial solutions