Accountor Northwest Chooses Vic.ai to Augment Their ERP for Efficiency Gains in Invoice Processing

Industry: Business Services

Clients: 500+

Invoice Volume: 200,000+ annually

ERP: PowerOffice

About Accountor Northwest

Accountor Northwest, headquartered in Norway, is a comprehensive provider of accounting and advisory services, serving 500-plus diverse clients. Accountor prioritizes sustainability, having achieved Environmental Lighthouse certification in 2021. Committed to technology innovation, the firm has also embraced artificial intelligence (AI) for streamlining invoice processing.

The challenge: Optimize invoice processing efficiency

Accountor Northwest primarily uses the ERP system PowerOffice to support its clients and their invoice processing needs. Accountor handles more than 200,000 invoices a year and continuously seeks to optimize their technology, processes, and services for maximum efficiency. While their existing ERP, PowerOffice, allows for the automation of some invoice volumes, adding AI technology significantly increases the level of automation and potential for continued growth and scalability.

Accountor chose to work with Propell.ai, a technology solution and integration partner, to implement the AI-first accounting platform from Vic.ai. By leveraging Vic.ai alongside their existing ERP, Accountor has dramatically increased accounting capabilities while reducing invoice processing time, providing a competitive advantage for the company and supporting their initiative to adopt new technologies.

"We have a strong focus on ensuring that employees enjoy an optimal work environment with meaningful tasks. It's important to adopt new technology that makes us an attractive employer and enables us to work efficiently for the benefit of our customers," says Vidar Risbakken, Managing Director of Accountor Northwest.

Choosing a vendor: The strategic advantage of Vic.ai and Propell.ai

Accountor Northwest explored potential AI solutions to streamline their inbound invoice process and after careful review and consideration, chose Propell.ai — a Vic.ai Solution Partner — to implement and support the Vic.ai platform. Propell.ai was able to deliver the Vic.ai technology on a Nordic platform to meet all GDPR and security requirements, which was crucial for Accountor Northwest in their vendor selection. Propell.ai also builds and manages all integrations to ERP systems, including PowerOffice.

"Propell.ai was able to demonstrate very good references from other accounting firms, and we placed great emphasis on the team at Propell.ai being highly competent and extremely customer-oriented. Investing in an AI system without manual PDF conversion, without any third-party interpretation, and pure AI processing data and learning from the deviations made in the accounting on both header data, line data, and dimensions was crucial in choosing a solution," says Vidar.

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Integration: Augmenting the existing ERP with no client interruption

Accountor Northwest was able to set requirements for the PowerOffice integration and how it should be built to optimize workflow processes and ensure efficiency for their business operations. Accountor Northwest was also able to customize document workflows for incoming invoices, both EHF and PDF, for the AI algorithm to record. Then the accountant is able to confirm the algorithm has been recorded correctly, and the invoice is sent for customer approval via their normal ERP experience. This means the customer can still work within their system of record with no changes or disruptions to their previous processes and systems.

"In the pilot phase of the new integration, we started with all the customers of three employees, and after seeing all the requirements for the integration were met and that the solution performed well, we chose to go live with over 250 customers on the same day. This went smoothly, and the transition for our employees, who had not worked with an AI solution before, was satisfactory from day one,” says Vidar. “This has been the most effective, least complex, and least time-consuming implementation process we have encountered, and it is clear that this is AI technology at its best, both in terms of implementation and functionality in the system.”

Future potential: Promising opportunities for continued use of AI

The Accountor Northwest team sees great growth and scalability potential with their new AI solution. The data ingestion, accuracy, and invoice predictions have been impressive — and they are encouraged about continued adoption across their client base. And, the team now processes invoices in just 54 seconds on average.

"Our experience after just a few months on the solution and with a larger customer base is very encouraging. We have seen that the solution learns extremely quickly from the changes we make, and it also benefits from the extensive historical dataset it is trained on. This has resulted in the algorithm predicting volumes of invoices correctly from day one, down to the item level, both on cost account and VAT,” says Vidar.

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Download the Accountor Northwest case study