Business Finland

Should you apply to Business Finland yourself or use a consultant?

An honest breakdown of doing a Business Finland application yourself, hiring a consultant, or running a hybrid — what each costs, and when each is the right call.

Most articles on this question are written by consultants and conclude, remarkably, that you should hire a consultant. Here is a more honest version, including the cases where you should not.

The real decision is not “can we write it ourselves?” Almost any capable team can write an application. The decision is where your project sits on two axes: how clear the project already is, and how much your team’s time is worth on the actual R&D work versus the paperwork.

Do it yourself when…

DIY is the right call more often than consultants admit. It fits when:

The project is already clear. You know the development question, the uncertainty is real and articulable, the work packages are obvious, and someone senior owns it. If the thinking is done, the application is mostly transcription.
You have someone who writes well and has the time. A founder or lead who can write a tight technical-commercial argument and has a few focused weeks can produce a strong application.
The funding is modest relative to the effort. For a smaller project, the cost or fee of external help may not be worth it.
You want to own the relationship. Business Finland values direct dialogue with the company. Doing it yourself builds that channel for future applications.

The cost of DIY is real but bounded: senior time, a learning curve on the mechanics, and the risk of missing something a first-timer wouldn’t know to include.

Use a consultant when…

External help earns its keep when the difficulty is not writing but shaping:

The project is fuzzy. If the team cannot cleanly state the R&D uncertainty, the scope keeps moving, or the commercial case and technical case don’t reinforce each other, the value is in the shaping, not the drafting.
The stakes are high and the team is stretched. When the funding is significant and your senior people cannot afford weeks away from the product, buying expertise and capacity is rational.
You’ve been rejected before. A previous rejection usually means a structural problem the team can’t see from inside. An outside read is worth a lot here.
You want the odds improved, not just the form filled. Good help changes the project’s fundability, not just its prose.

The cost is the fee — and the risk of choosing someone who fills forms rather than improves projects. Which model they charge under matters here; a success fee aligns incentives differently than a fixed fee.

The hybrid, which is often best

The strongest arrangement for many companies is neither pure DIY nor full outsourcing. It is a short, senior scoping pass followed by in-house writing:

Bring in expertise for the hard part — pressure-test the R&D thesis, sharpen the uncertainty, structure the work packages and budget logic.
Then let your own team write the application against that structure, keeping the relationship and the knowledge in-house.

This concentrates external spend where it changes the outcome, keeps your costs down, and leaves you more capable for the next application. It is the model that fits most companies with a real project but an unclear frame.

The honest disqualifiers

No amount of help fixes a project that is genuinely implementation rather than R&D. If the uncertainty isn’t there, the right advice is to not apply — and a good advisor will tell you that rather than take the fee. Be wary of anyone who says every project is fundable; be equally wary of “guaranteed funding” claims. Nobody can guarantee a Business Finland decision.

How to decide in one pass

Ask: is our problem writing, or is our problem the project itself? If it is writing, do it yourself or get light editing help. If it is the project — the thesis, the scope, the uncertainty, the risk of rejection — that is where outside expertise pays for itself, ideally in a focused burst rather than a full outsourcing.