Industry: Education

Locations: 100‍

ERP: Sage Intaact

Serves: 7,000 children worldwide

Impact with Vic.ai: Centralized AP team now processes invoices at 98% accuracy with 80% on Autopilot.

Higher Ground is a hyper-scaling, tech-enabled global school operator whose mission is to modernize and mainstream the international Montessori movement. As a global provider of Montessori-informed education and teacher training, Higher Ground’s Guidepost Montessori network is the world’s largest network of Montessori schools, with 100 school campuses across the US and Asia with at-home and virtual learning programs serving more than 7,000 families worldwide.

The challenge: Manual invoice processing and complex approvals across multiple geographies

With diverse stakeholders across multiple geographies, Higher Ground saw an opportunity to digitally transform its operations and improve its centralized accounts payable (AP) process. They were using disparate AP tools across the organization that did not integrate with their ERP, Sage Intacct, limiting the organization’s ability to benefit from improved efficiencies.

Higher Ground also has a complex invoice approval process with individuals involved from all 100 global campuses, including administrators on-site, and required multiple approvers. Email correspondence associated with invoice approvals was time-consuming, and hindered accuracy and visibility to the overall operation. Opening additional campuses added more complexity to their approval process, and the AP team was at their breaking point in terms of time and cost. If they could save on invoice processing, they could redirect funds to more valuable learning programs for children across the globe.‍

Our complicated invoice approvals process was impeding everyone involved — from the administrators at our schools to the AP clerks at our headquarters.
- Rachel Knapp, VP, Financial & Accounting Systems

The solution: AI automation streamlines approvals and slashes invoice processing time

As a forward-thinking organization, Higher Ground sought an intelligent, automated solution to provide oversight and uniformity across their finance operation and free its administrators from manually-intensive processing and approvals. The team selected Vic.ai for a centralized end-to-end invoice processing solution.

Now, the AP team can delegate a majority of the invoice processing to the AI engine within the Vic.ai platform, and leverage a streamlined and clear approval process.

Routing approvals is now an easy process. Our AP team is no longer struggling to get invoices approved on time and leadership loves being able to compare previous bills on the go with the mobile app.
- Rachel Knapp, VP, Financial & Accounting Systems

Higher Ground’s previous approval workflow required multiple back-and-forth emails when changes were needed. Vic.ai autonomous approval flows have saved the company significant time. In contrast to their formerly time-intensive approval routing process, where invoices could take up to two weeks to get approved, Higher Ground is now approving invoices in one to two days with Vic.ai.

“Routing approvals is now an easy process. Our AP team is no longer struggling to get invoices approved on time and leadership loves being able to compare previous bills on the go with the mobile app,” says Rachel Knapp, VP, Financial and Accounting Systems at Higher Ground.

They also now benefit from real-time visibility into the status of approval flows, and have been able to pinpoint exactly where an invoice is in approvals to fast-track a payment if a due date needs to be met.

Most importantly, Vic.ai’s ability to process large volumes of data at high accuracy has also resulted in significant time savings for Higher Ground. The month before launching Vic.ai, Higher Ground’s accountants were spending more than 10 minutes processing each invoice. Within the first 3 months on the Vic.ai platform, they were down to 3.7 to 4.8 minutes per invoice, and today, process invoices in about 2 minutes.

Higher Ground transformed AP with AI to be faster, smarter, and more centralized

Now a few years into leveraging the Vic.ai platform, the Higher Ground team has transformed their AP into a hyper-efficient, centralized operation. Leveraging AI to process invoices on behalf of their human team, Higher Ground has achieved a remarkable level of processing 80% of invoices on Autopilot, with no human intervention throughout the entire process.

Higher Ground has also reached an invoice accuracy rate of 98% across all fields. This means the Vic.ai platform can ingest, read, and code invoices on behalf of the team at a high accuracy rate. They are also seeing significant growth in no-touch invoices, also called straight-through-processing, on average 88%, where no human updates are made to an invoice — meaning they were posted automatically to Higher Ground’s ERP system, Sage Intacct.

I've been blown away by the customer service. You get a very quick response, and the caliber of the support staff is fantastic — you can tell that they understand the issue well.
- Rachel Knapp, VP, Financial & Accounting Systems

A no-touch invoice requires no human updates before posting the ERP. Also referred to as straight-through-processing, a no-touch invoice can and often will be on Autopilot, but it's important to note that an invoice does not have to be on Autopilot to be considered "no-touch."

"The AP team loves it,” says Margareta Marro, Director of Accounting Operations with Higher Ground. “It really helps them to become reviewers instead of processors [of data entry]." And all that success is supported by Vic.ai’s customer team, who support Higher Ground through onboarding and beyond. "I've been blown away by the customer service,” Knapp says. "You get a very quick response, and the caliber of the support staff is fantastic — you can tell that they understand the issue well."

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