Why Yamamoto Fine Blanking Engineering Chose Vic.ai

The opportunity

Located in Louisville, Kentucky, Yamamoto Fine Blanking Engineering is a manufacturer in the automotive industry. It primarily manufactures pressure plates used for brake systems and has expanded into gears, clutches, and window and seat components. With its components installed on new vehicles in North America, Europe, and South America, Yamamoto is dedicated to quality in both production and customer service.

That quality extends to their daily operations, too. The accounts payable (AP) department at Yamamoto faced long invoice processing times and missed out on early payment discount opportunities. Their legacy solution for AP automation had lagging upload and export times for processing and posting invoices to their ERP. Sometimes, this cumbersome and slow process resulted in a week-long delay, making it difficult for the company to take advantage of early payment discount opportunities provided by vendors. 

Financial Controller and Treasurer James Ward knew they needed to reduce invoice processing time and wanted to switch to an end-to-end AP platform for invoice processing and payment execution. He was also specifically looking for an AI-driven solution that would continuously learn, adapt, and get smarter over time because it would unlock new levels of efficiency for his team and ensure timely payments to their vendors.

The solution

The Yamamoto team selected Vic.ai for invoice processing, PO matching, autonomous approvals, payments, and analytics. With an AI-first approach, they will benefit from Vic.ai’s high accuracy rates, faster processing times, and shorter payment cycles.

“We have had very long turnaround times on invoice processing, and we needed to drastically reduce the time it took to process an invoice. We wanted a platform that could support this, but also required an end-to-end solution that would offer payment processing and disbursement, Ward says. “We are particularly excited about the AI and how it will learn as the team uses the platform, saving more time and reducing AP staff involvement.” 

The AP team will take advantage of the advanced payment processing functionality in the Vic.ai platform. Vic.ai’s proprietary AI will flag and surface available early payment discounts, enabling the team to take advantage of essential cost savings by paying vendors ahead of the invoice due date, right from within the Vic.ai platform. With most of Yamamoto’s vendors offering early payment discounts, this capability will significantly impact their available working capital. Vic.ai supports all payment types, including check, ACH, virtual card, and international, with no fees on U.S. transactions, allowing the Yamamoto team to pay a variety of vendors.

By replacing their legacy invoice processing software with leading AI technology, the Yamamoto team will now be able to process invoices faster and more accurately. Investing in leading technology will improve their overall AP operation and financial health while helping maintain strong relationships with critical vendors.

Learn more about Yamamoto Fine Blanking Engineering.

Learn more about the Vic.ai autonomous finance platform.