Financing your digital transition: what assistance is available?

For SMEs and ETIs who have not yet done so, successfully completing their digital transition became imperative even before the current health crisis. Today, the urgency of carrying out this transformation is such that the State has put in place new aids that are in addition to the already existing mechanisms at the national and regional levels.

La digital transition is an issue that is both important and complex for companies that do not necessarily have the financial resources to invest significant amounts over the long term. This is why aid to finance this transformation can be valuable for all SMEs and ETIs who have understood the need to enter the era of Industry 4.0.

Help, but for what?

Before using public aid, it is important to fully understand the importance of succeeding digital transition and to be able to organize it effectively.

What is digital transition?

The term” digital transition ”, or” digital transformation ”, refers to the process by which a company (or any type of organization) goes from operating without digital tools, or with an underuse of them, to a model in which new technologies are fully integrated.

Of course, some IT tools are now used in the vast majority of businesses. But they are often done in a poorly planned or coordinated manner and, above all, many SMEs do not use all the digital technologies at their disposal to improve the quality of their products or their productivity.

The digital transition in practice

Concretely, the digital transformation may concern different areas of the activity of an industrial enterprise. For example, in the construction industry, more and more machines can be controlled remotely, thanks to current technologies and the increasing amount of information they allow to receive and transmit.

Another example, the maintenance of industrial equipment can now largely be managed thanks to sensors placed on the machines and the monitoring of key indicators. With the GMAO 4.0, the establishment of predictive maintenance strategies considerably reduces the frequency and duration of production shutdowns, which promotes productivity.

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More generally, the digital transformation Go first of all through the dematerialization of a large number of processes, starting with invoice flows, commercial documents, contracts and purchase orders or even HR documents, but also more technical documents such as those relating to equipment maintenance.

How the State supports SMEs in their digital transition

The challenges of digital transition have grown to such an extent that the State has put in place mechanisms to help SMEs and ETIs to carry out this process successfully. The plan” France Relance ”, established by the government to help economic actors deal with the current crisis, even has a section specifically dedicated to investments in the transformation of SMEs towards Industry 4.0.

Assistance for transformative investment into the industry of the future

As part of the economic recovery plan, an envelope of 40 million euros will be deployed to support the investments of SMEs and ETIs and enable them to enter Industry 4.0. This financing assistance represents cash support from the State, whose final objective is to improve the competitiveness of business production processes.

Concretely, the aid is aimed at SMEs and ETIs who invest in a property, registered as a fixed asset and used for an industrial activity on French territory, when this property falls into one of the following categories:

• robotic equipment and cobotics ;
• additive manufacturing equipment;
• software used for design, manufacturing, transformation or maintenance operations;
• integrated machines intended for intensive computing;
• physical sensors collecting data on the company's production site, its production chain or on its transit system;
• programmable or numerically controlled production machines;
• augmented reality and virtual reality equipment used for design, manufacturing, transformation or maintenance operations;
• software or equipment whose use uses, in whole or in part, artificial intelligence and used for design, manufacturing or transformation operations as well as for all maintenance and production optimization operations.

Support systems

In addition to this financial assistance, the Ministry of the Economy has made available to businesses a handout summarizing the mechanisms that industrial companies can benefit from to face the current crisis. This guide lists both immediate aid to SMEs affected by the Covid-19 crisis, but also all assistance in financing the digital transition and ecological transition.

In addition, the portal France Num has been listing for several years all the devices intended to support businesses in their digital transformation and to enter Industry 4.0. Managed by the Directorate-General for Enterprises, this site brings together practical resources, financial aid and a network of advisers active throughout France. An action program has been put in place in partnership with all French Regions and professional organizations.

Regional aid for digital transformation

In addition to the State, the Regions are in fact very involved in digital transition businesses in their territories. For several years, several of them have been offering aid to SMEs to support them in this regard. While it is impossible to present them all here, we can cite, for example, the Brittany Region, where all the aid to businesses is summarised in a guidebook very clear. In particular, it presents the “Development Pack”, intended for companies that wish to invest to improve their competitiveness, for example by reorganizing themselves or by acquiring new equipment.

Let's also mention the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region and its search engine, which lists all the regional aids available to businesses in the region, and in particular those aimed at encourage their digital transition.

The Pays de la Loire Region has set up the program Pays de la Loire Digital investment, to help small businesses acquire and appropriate digital tools with high added value, in order to increase productivity. Does the Île-de-France Region offer a large number of more targeted aids for the many companies present on its territory.

Faced with the urgent need to realize their digital transformation, SMEs and ETIs are therefore not alone. Various aids, in particular financial ones, are available to support them in this process which, in order to be optimally effective, must be thoughtful and organized and rely on efficient and adapted tools.