Sabi, a financial aggregator for Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), faced challenges with lengthy and complex financing procedures.
These inefficiencies in connecting ecosystem builders and financing institutions posed a risk of profit loss for MSEs due to delayed access to funds.
To address this issue:
How might we streamline financing processes to ensure timely and efficient delivery of financial aid to MSEs, reducing profit-loss risk?
Financing flow improvement.
Company
Sabi
Duration
1 month (2023)
My Role
Researcher and Operation
Responsibilities
Research Plan, Stakeholder Interview, Participatory Design
Impact
The initiative achieved measurable success:
Faster Delivery: Optimized financing workflows reduced processing time, ensuring MSEs received financial aid more promptly.
Reduce Complexity: Simplified service flows minimized touch points, lowering the risk of human error and improving efficiency.
Approach
This initiative, completed in one month and directly overseen by the Chief Operation Officer, utilized targeted methods to achieve its goals.
Interviews with stakeholders—ecosystem builders, financing institutions, and KYC providers—provided a foundational understanding of the existing process.
Mini co-design workshops followed, enabling collaborative identification of pain points and exploration of service flow improvements.
By leveraging participatory design and stakeholder insights, the approach emphasized actionable, user-driven solutions that addressed inefficiencies while fostering stakeholder alignment.
Journey/ Process
The journey began with mapping key stakeholders involved in the financing process. Interviews with ecosystem builders, financing institutions, and KYC providers revealed bottlenecks in document verification and fund disbursement. Service flow mapping provided a comprehensive view of existing inefficiencies, highlighting redundancies and delays.
Co-design workshops brought stakeholders and internal teams together to develop solutions collaboratively. By visualizing and prototyping streamlined workflows, the team proposed a revised service flow that reduced touch points and incorporated automation to address manual errors.
Rapid prototyping followed, testing the updated workflow with simulated cases to evaluate usability and processing speed. Iterative refinements ensured the prototype met stakeholder expectations and addressed critical pain points.
The process culminated in a live pilot with selected MSEs, ecosystem builders, and financing institutions. Data from the pilot—including processing time, user satisfaction, and error rates—validated the effectiveness of the new service flow and informed final adjustments.
Result
The project delivered impactful outcomes:
Optimized Service Flow: Reduced touch points by around 40%, decreasing the average financing process time by almost 30%.
Increased Stakeholder Confidence: Built trust with stakeholders by ensuring transparency and accountability in the updated process.
MSE Impact: Enabled faster financial aid delivery, minimizing profit-loss risks and improving overall business resilience for MSEs.
By streamlining processes and fostering collaboration, the initiative set a new benchmark for efficient financial aid delivery, enhancing both stakeholder engagement and MSE sustainability.
