More information
Description
The project aims to increase the rate of financial inclusion and help SMEs lower the cost and overhead of running financial operations in-house. The project will address the digital financial inclusion for private individuals where the unbanked will be targeted and also SME''s where the ecosystem will be targeted.
Activities used to develop the SME solution and implement an open-source software solution that offers financial operations as a service:
- Research on available open-source software components that can be reused to fill part of the flow. Drafting technical and infrastructure requirements together with creating the design of the software.
- Software development, test, validation and integration.
- Environment - Extend the promoter''s hardware and software infrastructure to build the development & test infrastructure, set up a collaborative development infrastructure required to run the software solution, create a software repository shared with the project partner, set-up multiple platforms.
The innovation aspect for the part of the project that addresses the SMEs is that the Project Promoter develops an open-source software solution that enables financial operations “as a service” for SMEs. The solution offers a single window for financial operations covering balance sheet, salary, invoicing, and money flow automation, accounts payable and receivable capabilities
The project is done in partnership with the Norwegian company Bakken & Bæck AS. The company is a digital product development studio that creates new products and services for clients and own ventures. Their main role is to leverage data processed by Allevo’s software component to provide data insights. This is achieved by building a machine learning model for predictive analytics, using natural language generation models. This results in new service propositions combining predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and financing to enhance consumer and business offerings.
Summary of project results
The project has achived the following outcome which implies development of an open source software solution license (GPL v3) that offers financial operations as a service to SMEs, to help them automate and centralize common financial flows, at a very low cost: balance sheet, salary payments, invoicing, money flow automation, accounts payable and receivable, cash reporting. This has been successfully completed, and the source code available openly on Github: https://github.com/Whizzer-Project. Also, the documentation: https://fintp.org/projects/whizzer/
Summary of bilateral results
The first project period was about research and design of machine learning algorithms for automating transactions in the finance and accounting sector for SMEs, the current and final project period has consisted mainly of developing and testing of the AI component. Bakken & Bæck has delivered a software component distributed under the same GPL v3 license. The solution also uses existing open source ICT components. Bakken & Bæck’s main deliverable is an API (“application programming interface”, which is a set of definitions and protocols for building and integrating application software) service that can be integrated in the main software solution developed by Allevo.As documented in attached API service description, the API service is a component that uses machine learning to automatically reconcile financial transaction, and thus reduce the amount of manual work that usually goes into this type of accounting task.