Transposition et adaptation du processus de contrôle interne des activités financières du groupe Sowalfin vers les activités de sensibilisation et d'accompagnement des entrepreneurs wallons

Abstract

Sowalfin is basically known as the reference to facilitate access to public financing for Walloon SMEs. Since its creation in 2002, this company has been constantly listening to the market and its needs in order to adapt and create new useful solutions. Through its four subsidiaries and the coordination of local Invests, Sowalfin offers today a diversified product range to meet all the needs of entrepreneurs or SMEs. This has become increasingly true when the Walloon government decided two years ago to transfer to Sowalfin most of the awareness-raising and support activities carried out until then by the AEI (Agency for Entreprise and Innovation). The integration of this non-financial mission is an asset that should lead to greater coherence on the ground since Sowalfin has been playing “a coordinating and facilitating role throughout the business life cycle from guidance to financing through awareness-raising and support” (Sowalfin, 2019b). It is quite obvious that Sowalfin has been facing an internal restructuring for the past two years to integrate these new missions. Although this restructuring was a success, the need to formalize procedures emerged quickly. This is the context within which this thesis’ project was born: “Transposition and adaptation of the internal control process of the Sowalfin Group’s financial activities to the awareness-raising and support activities of Walloon entrepreneurs”. This project is divided into four stages and obviously starts with the analysis and description of the current process management in each mission. Then, several analysis’ tools and models are presented and allow us to suggest possible recommendations. These recommendations will be split into two parts: firstly, general recommendations aimed at improving internal control and secondly, recommendations for transposition and adaptation. Finally, two useful monitoring tools to evaluate this project in the long term will be introduced.