Digitisation is currently on everyone’s lips in Europe, because by international standards many small and medium-sized enterprises are on a technically outdated level. Industry 4.0″ opens up many additional attractive future potentials with exciting business models and new markets. According to the KfW banking group, almost 50 percent of all medium-sized companies invest less than EUR 10,000 a year to drive digital change. Only one fifth of the companies surveyed have a digitization strategy at all. According to information from a ZEW study, the main reason for the sluggish investments lies in unsecured financing. According to this study, despite a high equity ratio, 77 percent of digitization projects are financed from current income, with bank loans playing practically no role.
For these reasons, a number of funding programmes have recently been launched by the EU, the Federal Government and the Länder, from which you too can benefit. Each of these programs has its own focus, e.g. migration of old IT solutions, digitization and automation of workflows or IT-supported development of new products and services. In the case of ERP software projects, the main type of support usually provided is consultancy services, which also include documentation services.
Overview of some funding programmes
Below you will find a brief overview of funding programmes that may be suitable for the promotion of ERP software.
COSME (EU funding programme)
The EU funding programme COSME supports measures to improve the competitiveness of companies until the end of 2020, with a special focus on the promotion of Digitisation in SMEs. In addition to public institutions, companies, start-ups, associations and societies as well as the liberal professions are also eligible to apply.
- Access to finance at all stages of the company’s life, from start-up to expansion (guarantees, soft loans or equity participations).
- Support through further training and know-how transfer
go-digital (BMWi support programme)
With go-digital, the BMWi aims to promote digitisation in small and medium-sized enterprises, supports the optimisation of everyday working life and finances measures that protect against the loss of sensitive data. Authorized consulting firms accompany the companies in the three modules “Digitalized Business Processes”, “Digital Market Development” and “IT Security” and relieve them of formalities such as applications and proofs.
The consultancy services in a selected module (with any necessary ancillary modules) will be funded with a funding rate of 50% to a maximum daily rate of 1,100 euros. In the case of a combination of main module and ancillary module(s), a maximum of 30 consultant days are eligible.
Horizon 2020 (EU funding programme)
Horizon 2020 is the European Union’s framework programme for research and innovation. As a funding programme it aims to to build a knowledge and innovation-based society and a competitive economy across the EU, while contributing to sustainable development. In order to have a targeted impact on society, the programme focuses on a number of areas and contains a comprehensive catalogue of measures. Support is provided for joint projects involving several companies as well as individual companies with a European or global business model.
Eurostars Support Programme
Eurostars is a joint funding programme of EUREKA and the European Commission, which will be continued under the name Eurostars 2 under the horizon 2020. The aim of Eurostars is to motivate small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) more strongly for European cooperation in research and development projects. Eurostars works according to the same principle as the EUREKA initiative: Eurostars projects are open to technology and serve civilian purposes. They aim at the development of an innovative product, process or service. According to the so-called “bottom-up principle”, the project contents can be freely determined by the participating partners.
Applications to promote digitisation can be submitted by small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups that invest at least ten percent of their turnover in research and development or deploy ten percent of their staff in this area. The funding rate for SMEs is 50 percent – this is a non-repayable grant.
There are many more on the market Funding program available, an overview of Support programmes by the federal states can be found, for example, on the website of the Institute for Digital Transformation. Your local Chamber of Industry and Commerce or Chamber of Crafts can also be a contact point for information on suitable funding programmes.