On 21 August, to mark World Entrepreneurship Day, a finding emerged that should give every entrepreneur and manager pause for thought. According to an analysis carried out by Partner d’Impresa based on over three thousand surveys, our small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) reveal structural weaknesses in two crucial areas: financial and asset management, and human resources management.
The issue is clear: “SMEs are neglecting finance and people”, a short-circuit that risks hampering growth and competitiveness.
The analysis, reported by Sky TG24, paints a telling picture. Whilst taxation (with a score of +15.29) receives the utmost attention – often in response to the urgency of deadlines – financial planning struggles to gain momentum (+3.78). Corporate assets (-7.85) and human resources management (-7.42), on the other hand, are considered the ‘Cinderellas’ of business management.
As Sonia Canal, CEO of Partner d’Impresa, explains, many entrepreneurs attribute liquidity difficulties mainly to taxes, but “the problem arises earlier”. There is a lack of awareness of their own profit margins, liquidity planning and control over how money is spent.
This financial short-sightedness results in a vicious circle: turnover is confused with actual cash flow; no personal assets are built up separately from the company’s; and, on the human side, the focus is limited to managing contracts and compliance, whilst neglecting clearly defined roles, measurable objectives and reward schemes. A business that lacks a clear understanding of its cash flow and fails to value its staff is a business walking a tightrope.
In this context, the challenge for SMEs is not only to find new resources, but to optimise existing ones intelligently, freeing up tied-up capital and improving organisational efficiency.
It is precisely in this regard that one comes across initiatives attempting to tackle the problem with a different approach. For example, the model proposed by Nexyzen is gaining ground online.
The idea is straightforward: rather than constantly seeking new liquidity to pay suppliers, the system automatically identifies cross-debts and cross-credits between companies participating in the network and offsets them, without any money actually changing hands. No interest, no intermediaries, no new debt.
It is a mechanism designed specifically for those businesses which, as the Partner d’Impresa analysis highlights, struggle to keep working capital under control and to convert turnover into actual cash flow. Freeing up capital tied up in trade receivables without having to resort to external financing means gaining the breathing space needed to stop chasing deadlines and start looking further ahead, towards strategy and people.
Partner d’Impresa’s analysis shows us ‘where’ we need to improve, namely in financial and people management. Tools such as Nexyzen show us ‘how’, offering a practical and innovative way to overcome one of the main obstacles: inefficient cash flow management.
No one is claiming that a platform alone can solve the cultural problem revealed by the data – namely, the tendency to neglect financial planning and work organisation. But initiatives such as these suggest that, when it comes to liquidity, there is a different way of tackling the issue – one that is more collaborative and less reliant on the traditional banking system. It remains to be seen how widely these solutions will catch on, but in the meantime they point the way forward.
Perhaps the real turning point for our SMEs will not be a new tax measure, but a change in mindset: to stop viewing taxes as the sole enemy and start building a business culture that prioritises financial planning, asset protection and the development of people. Because, as the analysis points out, a healthy business must do more than just generate turnover: it must create money, retain it, make it work for the business, protect it and grow it through the contribution of everyone involved.
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