5 key trends for 2025: How SMEs can secure their competitiveness
The business world is evolving rapidly, driven by new technologies, regulatory requirements and growing customer expectations. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this means adapting to a dynamic landscape in order to remain competitive. Here are the five trends that will be crucial in 2025 – and how businesses can capitalize on them.
1. Digital invoices and paperless processes increase efficiency
From January 1, 2025, electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) will be mandatory in the B2B sector in Germany, which presents companies with challenges and opportunities. Legislators not only want to use e-invoicing to increase transparency in invoice transactions, but also to prevent tax fraud.
Companies that switch to digital invoicing processes at an early stage benefit considerably:
- Automated processing: The e-invoice enables direct integration into accounting and ERP systems, reducing errors and minimizing workload.
- Faster payment processes: With standardized formats such as ZUGFeRD or XRechnung, payment periods can be significantly shortened.
- Cost savings: Companies save on printing, shipping and storage costs for paper documents.
This switch offers SMEs in particular the opportunity to make administrative processes more efficient and remain competitive in the long term.
2. Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) optimize accounting
Digitalization in accounting is progressing rapidly. Automation and AI play a key role in this. They take over repetitive tasks such as entering and allocating documents. This allows companies to save valuable resources and minimize error rates at the same time.
A specific example of how recurring tasks can be automated is the reconciliation of incoming payments. By linking business accounts to the accounting software, account transactions can be retrieved, postings sorted and receipts automatically assigned. Payments can be triggered directly from the accounting software to pay salaries or settle outstanding invoices. Collective transfers or Instant Payments are also practical for companies (see Trend 4).
The use of modern cloud solutions also enables access to accounting from anywhere. This is an efficiency booster, especially for smaller companies and self-employed people without their own financial accounting.
- Increased efficiency: Time-consuming manual activities such as document processing are drastically reduced.
- Faster decisions: Automated processes provide real-time data for more precise business management.
- Scalability: Especially for growing companies, automation is key to keeping pace with increasing requirements.
According to a PwC study, AI-enabled accounting processes can replace up to 50% of manual tasks.
3. Data Analysis and Business Intelligence are the basis for strategic decisions
Financial data is the backbone of every company, but many companies do not fully exploit its potential. Modern Business Intelligence tools (BI tools) make it possible to gain actionable insights from large volumes of data:
- Financial forecasts: Predictive analytics can forecast future cash flows or sales trends based on historical data.
- Strategic management: BI tools identify optimization potential in the cost structure or uncover inefficient business processes.
- Better competitiveness: Data-based insights enable more informed decisions and faster reactions to market changes.
Solutions that analyse and graphically present financial data in real time using automated account views are a good example: categorization of account transactions, cash flow analyses, risk analyses, contract recognition and much more can be combined. This increases the quality of decision-making and generally leads to better results.
4. Instant payments: real-time transfers ensure fast cash flow
Instant payments are transfers in real time, within seconds, which are executed around the clock – 24/7. For SMEs and the self-employed, the ability to receive instant payments is an opportunity to improve their liquidity. In e-commerce, instant payments provide a better shopping experience. Customers can pay quickly and smoothly with their familiar bank login details, which reduces abandoned purchases.
Instant payments offer the following advantages for companies:
- Improved cash flow: Incoming payments are made in real time, which avoids liquidity bottlenecks and increases planning reliability.
- Fast availability: Payments are immediately in the account, e.g. for urgent supplier invoices or salary payments.
- Cost efficiency: Despite the speed, banks may not charge higher fees than for conventional transfers.
The European Commission is driving forward the expansion of instant payments across the EU, accelerating their introduction in 2025.
5. Fraud, debt collection, identity - automated checks improve risk prevention
It is important for companies to minimize payment defaults and at the same time ensure smooth payment processes for their customers. Open banking and data analytics open up numerous innovative possibilities here:
- Real-time credit check: With the help of account data such as the current account balance or payment histories, companies can assess their customers' creditworthiness in real time.
- Secure identity verification: The account holder can be clearly verified by logging into the bank account. This can significantly reduce the risk of fraud - a decisive advantage in e-commerce.
- Efficient payment processing: Customers can initiate a bank transfer via finAPI directly at check-out, enabling fast and smooth transactions.
- Modern receivables management: In accounting, outstanding customer invoices can be identified through automated analyses of account transactions. Payment reminders including a payment link can be easily sent to customers via various channels (email, SMS, WhatsApp or traditional post).
finAPI provides solutions that do just that: Reduce payment defaults, optimize processes and effectively minimize fraud risks – while significantly improving the payment experience for customers.
Conclusion: Seizing the opportunities of digitalization - increasing competitiveness
The five trends for 2025 show that companies which implement digitalization, automation and data-based decision-making processes at an early stage will benefit in the long term. SMEs in particular can strengthen their competitiveness by relying on modern technologies such as open banking, increasing efficiency, minimizing risks and improving the customer experience. The future is digital – companies should use these trends to position themselves successfully for the challenges ahead.
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