Azets is an international company with over 7000 employees across 7 countries that provides accounting, tax, audit, advisory and business services for organizations of all shapes and sizes. The Finnish division has 800 employees and is the biggest provider of accounting services in the country for customers using Netvisor. Although Azets are leaders in utilizing the inbuilt automation tooling of Netvisor it remained insufficient in satisfying their automation ambitions. Other solutions available on the market had also been found to be insufficient when trying to get volumes of this magnitude under control.

Clearly defined metrics and excellent results

A common challenge among accounting offices is that they lack accurate data on how well their current automation efforts are working. Using Accode, Azets has defined a few key metrics that are accurate, useful, and easy to understand. These metrics are measured in real time for over hundreds of thousands of purchase invoices a year for over a thousand companies:

No-touch invoices: invoices which received zero changes from a human after the automation.

Azets initial no-touch rates were already high compared to industry standards. After a year of working with Accode these no-touch rates have doubled.

Currently, every invoice is reviewed by a bookkeeper to ensure quality. However, the data shows that over half of all invoices could be processed without ever being shown to a bookkeeper without sacrificing quality. This in turn would yield further time savings.

We have been able to gain a deeper understanding of where our greatest process inefficiencies are using the data collected by Accode. This data has allowed us as an organization to focus our automation efforts on challenges that will provide the greatest results.

Virpi Aalto, Development Manager - Azets Insight Oy

Quick cycles for testing and implementing error-free automation solutions

Bookkeeper trust is crucial for turning automation efforts into operational efficiency. Accode Sandboxes have enabled Azets to quickly test and implement solutions while minimizing the number of errors that reach the bookkeepers. A Sandbox is a simulation environment where the user can test the outcome of an automation on past data, ensuring that it would have worked as expected on past invoices.

Without a testing/simulation environment the user has no means of knowing whether the automation works as expected. All errors that reach the bookkeeper erode trust which in turn makes the automation builder hesitant to add any new automation.

It is clear that Azets have liked the Sandbox tool as they have created over 1000 sandboxes where thousands of hypotheses were tested - before they ever reached the bookkeeper in production.

Sandboxes allow me to test these solutions regardless of how complex they grow. This combined with excellent live-automation allows us to find and resolve the vast majority of mistakes and errors before the bookkeeper even notices.

Pia Pylkkönen, Junior Automation Developer - Azets Insight Oy

Building solutions that are easy to maintain

Automation solutions grow tricky to maintain as they grow. This is especially true when rulesets are spread out across hundreds or even thousands of customer environments. With Accode, Azets has managed to simplify their automation efforts into something far more easy to manage and maintain.

Using Accode, Azets has managed to

• Centralize their automation data & rules into a single environment
• Reduce the number of automation rules by 10x
• Double the number of no-touch invoices

We have a single rule which identifies and processes construction VAT for 500 invoices across 50 customer environments every month. This single rule works automatically for every new customer environment that we add to Accode.

Annika Jokiniemi, Accounting and Automation Specialist - Azets Insight Oy