Boosting SME Survival Rate by enabling convenient and accessible Cash Flow Management via Artificially Intelligent Virtual Assistants.

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COVID-19 has placed tremendous strain on many SMEs' finances. Falling demand has threatened commercial viability, especially for businesses with low cash reserves or unstable cash flows. 80% of SME failures are a result of cash flow problems. Deloitte's report 'COVID-19: Managing Cash Flow' (2020) highlighted the centrality of effective cash flow management to businesses' chances of surviving the pandemic.This project aims to provide a tool that makes it easy and quick for non-experts to understand and better manage their company's cash flow. The technology proposed makes cash flow management simpler, quicker, and more accessible for all SMEs. This will be achieved by building an artificially intelligent Virtual Assistant (VA) that is permanently on call for users via text or voice interfaces. Business owners can access the VA to interrogate their cash flow positions using normal, conversational language through a range of channels including instant messenger, Webchat, or via the phone using automatic speech recognition. Open banking integration will help pull information into one place. Market distribution will be via partnerships with existing suppliers of services to SMEs.The objective is to save thousands of UK businesses over a five-year period; this will be achieved by reducing the failure rates of the SMEs using the proposed service.The VA bypasses the need to use financial terminology because users can express themselves naturally. For example, a business owner may say: "I reckon a third of my clients are slow paying. Who are they and how long are they taking on average, and can you tell me what I'm owed?". Responses will be immediate, providing up-to-date information from both bank accounts and accounting packages - all presented back to users in everyday natural language. Business owners and managers can then take action or request more detail.