Digitisation funding: types, paperwork and sequence

The first question in most companies is how much money is available. In practice, applications rarely fail on the amount and often on the form — on a project that is not described in a bounded way, on missing evidence for the costs, or on the fact that the order had long been placed by the time the application was filed. Funding is not a discount you pick up at the till, it is an administrative procedure with its own order of steps. Knowing that order takes care of most of the work.

A project in the sense of a funding guideline has a beginning, an end, a describable goal and a quantified cost. Saying that the company wants to digitise its workflows does not meet that standard. Replacing duplicate data entry between the merchandise management system and the accounting system with an interface, with named data fields, a date and a quotation, does. This sharpening is not a formality for the authorities: it is the point at which the company works out what is actually going to be built.

At the same time, funding shifts the business case rather than replacing it. A project that does not pay for itself without funding rarely pays for itself with funding — the running cost of operating, maintaining and adapting the result stays with the company once the funding period ends. The sensible order is therefore the other way round: do the arithmetic first, then apply. How to quantify the effort behind a single case is described on our process analysis page, and those figures are exactly the material an application needs.

Funding for digitisation comes from three levels. The federal government sets up programmes through its ministries and has them approved by subordinate authorities or appointed project agencies; subsidised loans run through the state-owned promotional bank and are applied for through the company house bank (KfW). The federal states operate their own promotional banks with programmes tailored to the regional economy. European Union money usually reaches companies indirectly, through state programmes financed from EU funds.

There is a central directory for the search: the federal funding database, in which programmes from the federal government, the states and the EU can be filtered by purpose, region and company size (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs). In addition, the chambers of industry and commerce and the chambers of skilled crafts advise on orientation without approving anything themselves (DIHK). That preliminary step pays off because it removes programmes whose conditions the company cannot meet anyway.

Nobody can make promises at this stage, neither the chamber nor a service provider. Programmes expire, budgets run out, application windows open and close, guidelines are amended between one project and the next. A sound approach therefore checks again shortly before filing which version of the guideline applies — and schedules the implementation so that a rejection does not make the project impossible.

The most frequent reason for rejection is not substantive but chronological: the project has already started. Under most guidelines, the start is the conclusion of a supply or service contract attributable to the implementation. In practice that means the signed order confirmation, the binding purchase order, the down payment made, the software contract concluded. Whether anything has been delivered or paid for yet makes no difference.

What does not usually count as a start are preparatory steps: obtaining quotations, holding talks, writing down requirements, commissioning a process analysis as a separate service provided it is not itself part of the project applied for. Because the boundary depends on the guideline in each case, it belongs to the questions that should be settled with the funding body before anyone signs — in writing, with reference to the specific project.

Many programmes offer a way out for urgent cases: consent to an early start. It is applied for separately, has to be justified and is granted in writing. The effect matters: it permits the earlier start, but it creates no entitlement to a later approval. Anyone who uses it carries the risk of paying for the project in full. That decision belongs at management level and should be on file.

A funding procedure consists of more than the application. Approval is followed by drawing down funds, interim reports and finally the statement of use. Companies that discover this part only after implementation end up hunting for records in mailboxes and folders, losing the time they saved on the application. Documentation therefore belongs in the project plan, not in the wrap-up.

It helps to set up the technical documentation of the project so that it also serves as evidence: what was built, for which systems, with what result. Sound process documentation serves both purposes — it records the new workflow for the staff and at the same time shows the funding body that the project was implemented as described.

The practical consequence of the start rule is a schedule in two halves. Before the decision comes everything that costs nothing and binds nobody: recording the workflows, selecting the measures, gathering quotations, filing the application. After the decision comes everything that is binding. Between the two sits a waiting period whose length depends on the programme and should be asked about before filing.

That waiting period can be used. Cleaning up master data, clarifying responsibilities, assembling test data, preparing access rights: none of this costs external money, yet it noticeably shortens the later implementation. Bringing that work forward means the procedure costs less time than it first appears — and it shows whether the conditions for the planned process automation are in place at all.

For urgent projects the sober alternative remains: start without funding. Where a workflow burns time every day, the delay can cost more than the grant is worth. The sensible move is then to split the project — implement the urgent part now and reserve a clearly separable second part for an application. What matters is that both parts are described and commissioned as genuinely separate work, so the second is not treated as already started.