- growing pains -
Control investment decisions for growth
Taking the first steps in starting a business is intimidating and overwhelming. Entrepreneurs need proper resources and support to gain enough confidence to get their business off the ground.
Perfect Stitch’s demand is still growing, but Gretta doesn’t know where and how to scale next.
Perfect Stitch Business Profile
Trading: 5 years Revenue: $2M per annum Full-time employees: 10 Assets: A lockup full of stock and her website, but looking to grow
She has some business data gathered and cash on hand but no way to quickly collate her data to inform where she should invest. Additionally, she has the feeling that she’s unnecessarily overspending in some areas but isn’t sure how to investigate this further.
Perfect Stitch is still operating out of Gretta’s garage and is bursting at the seams. She’s been placing larger orders for materials to keep up with demand and have a stockpile for her high-trending items, which creates a pressing need for a much larger space. This, in addition to the other decisions she’s having to make to scale the business overall, is causing Gretta to feel bogged down with indecision and she’s mentally mapping worst-case scenarios.
"I just want to talk to someone about how to think and approach data in my business. I want to know what questions to ask the data."
—Founder and Digital Strategist, Startup
What the bank can do:
With a shared history underway, banks have data on hand that can guide SME customers through these periods of growth, providing proactive insights into future investments and boosting their confidence when the time comes to take action. In benefitting from proactive, data-supported suggestions, SMEs can start to see their bank not only as a trusted partner but also as a vital arm of their business that boosts their overall visibility into their business and minimizes risk.
A bank can offer Gretta:
Relationship managers to explore and explain data-based insights Proactive suggestion to invest in a warehouse to store stock and run operations Preapproved lines of credit based on collated data around business and industry risk profiles Review of business practices that are benchmarked against peers to find inefficiencies:
- AI-generated visualization of multiple outcomes and what-if analysis
- Proactive suggestions for investment, including risk assessment
- Real-time alerts of supply chain inefficiencies with suggestions for alternatives
"I have the analytics abilities to dig into my data, but valuable insights take too long to uncover."
—Director of Operations
"I need to understand what’s coming in the next three months. What does the client pipeline look like?"
—Director, Blockchain Startup, U.K.
"We’re innovating with Temenos to not only create something special, but to evolve with SME owners along their growth journeys. It’s about understanding the human behind the business. It’s been so exciting to watch their journeys evolve, seeing the excitement from SME owners, and creating a smarter business model for running a small business.”
—Jeff Wright, Senior Vice President, Equipment, Digital & Client Solutions, Canadian Western Bank
Success Story:
Canadian Western Bank
Breaking the Boundaries of SME Banking
Temenos and Canadian Western Bank (CWB) have become partners in innovation for SME banking with the new Explainable AI-driven (XAI) solution called the Temenos Virtual COO. For SME owners, the solution gives them a COO in their pockets, a virtual advisor to assist them run their businesses, free up time, and provide actionable intelligence that helps them grow. Using advanced analytics and XAI-driven modeling, the VCOO drives action and execution of insights, simulating different scenarios and providing transparent recommendations so that owners can change their behaviors to generate better outcomes. This functionality is underpinned by aggregated financial and business data to provide an advanced, open banking, real-time view of the SME’s financial health. For Canadian Western Bank, this real-time view of an SME’s financial health enables them to unlock new value from the SME market that may have previously been considered too high risk. It empowers the bank to become a trusted partner from an earlier stage in the SME’s journey, enabling a new, bolder, proactive business model to identify potential funding needs before an SME even approaches them.