Incorporating the latest technology to create the best software

Ever since the beginning of Tripletex, the company’s goal has been to make everyday life easier with modern technology. And what Tripletex has noticed is that simplification is surprisingly complicated. They have been doing it for years and are still not done – there is always something to improve as the world keeps changing.

“Tripletex is created by people with a technical background so utilizing the latest technologies as a means to provide better benefits and experiences for customers has always been highly important to us. We want to create software that is the best by using the best technological advancements – continually making our software better and more efficient.”

To provide the best possible solution for its customers, Tripletex incorporates smart technological innovations to make manual processes less heavy and time-consuming. This is where automation and AI come into play. With AI, manual tasks can be automated – making the process more efficient and creating significant time savings.

Automating purchase invoice processing

“We always scout new technologies on the market and what we can incorporate into Tripletex. When looking for new solutions we always look internationally as well and our team noticed that okay this could be a game-changer, AI is going to be used for accounting and it will have a huge impact on effectiveness.”

Taking a look at the time-consuming manual processes of accounting the Tripletex team was aware that purchase invoice processing takes a lot of time. It’s time-consuming, yet doesn’t provide much additional value to the customers.

“The problem we saw was that customers use a lot of time to post incoming invoices! registering cost accounts, department  and project. These manual tasks can easily be automated, and our customers can spend their time on more value-adding tasks.”

Tripletex knew that this would be an important task to simplify with the help of automation. It would make the process easier, and more efficient and also make accounting more enjoyable. Accountants have always used a big chunk of their time to process invoices but there hasn’t been a solution like this available before. Being able to incorporate AI into invoice processing brings a huge relief.

Also when looking at the bigger picture – creating a solution like this will help maintain Tripletex’s competitive advantage in the Norwegian market. Accounting automation solutions are increasing on the market and customers are expecting more advanced solutions. Using FabricAI’s AI models supports Tripletex’s position as the trailblazer among Norwegian financial management software providers.

“In regards to invoicing this has been a must-have if we’re going to continue to be in the front of technology and have a system that the customers will still love in three years to come. Automation like this is something that we must have in place so that we have a system that lets the accountants be as efficient as they can be.”

The big decision between building and buying

After deciding that a solution like this should be created – there are generally two options that the company can choose from – to build or to buy.

“AI models are far more complex than you might think and it’s a big area, it’s important to do it right. If you were to do it on your own you would have to have a significant amount of resources aimed to only focus on that very specific domain.“

Building a solution like this takes a lot of time and money. The developers and the team have to be highly skilled in this niche and devote a long period of time to creating a solution that works at a decent level. Usually, this would mean that the company would have to recruit additional skilled people so that the project doesn’t take up too many resources from other important projects. Recruiting is expensive and it takes time before the recruit gets to the point where they start to develop the solution.

“We noticed that this is an area where we have specialists but we realized that we are not ‘the’ specialists in this niche and we should rather find someone that already is. Even though we did have the data – we didn’t have the time, detailed knowledge, or resources to get the most out of it. Buying the solution would bring us the best results.”

Choosing FabricAI as the AI provider

Choosing your AI partner is an important step in the process. Not all AI is the same or provides similar results. You need to have a good understanding of how things work and what the differences are between solutions and AI models so that the data truly provides value. In addition, it’s crucial to have mutual understanding and trust that the provider has the right solution for you. 

Almost all automation solutions on the market focus on automating data entry (account numbers, dimensions, VAT code, etc.). FabricAI’s Progressive Automation takes automation further and its purpose is to reduce the number of invoices for the accountant to process, and not just to prefill information on purchase invoices

“It takes both time, resources, and a great deal of knowledge to build a good and functioning AI model. In addition, the integration between the systems needs to be seamless.”

After contemplating their options and evaluating different providers Tripletex chose FabricAI as their partner for purchase invoice processing automation. 

In comparison to different AI providers, FabricAI was the one with the most advanced AI models tailored for purchase invoice processing and a visionary outlook on developing it even further. 

“When contemplating the providers we learned that Finland has come further than Norway regarding technological advancements in the public sector and the accounting software market. It was a natural choice to pick a provider from the most advanced market. ”

“FabricAI is an entrepreneurial, young, forward-leaning company that pushes forward to create change. Their drive truly impressed us.”

FabricAI has been building purchase invoice automation solutions for some years now and knows what works and what does not. Having been through the challenges and pain points already FabricAI was able to make sure that major obstacles were avoided. 

Building a solution like this is not always easy 

What’s still important to remember is that building a custom AI solution doesn’t happen overnight – it requires time and effort from both parties. Our teams worked seamlessly together but there still were some bumps in the road. With customized solutions, there doesn’t exist a ready-made template that is just copy-pasted into the customers’ software. Building it requires getting to understand the customer’s software and having in-depth planning with their developers and product managers. 

“One of the tricky parts was making the customer interface in a way that Tripletex customers will love to use and understand it. Artificial knowledge like this was completely new to us, so determining what should be communicated to our customers during the process has been challenging. We always want to keep them informed but we don’t want to scare them away while the end product is not ready yet.”

Tripletex found the implementation process as something that definitely requires work from both teams but is worthwhile. 

From an idea to a ready solution in just 8 months

Creating the solution from scratch in just 8 months took a lot of discussions, overcoming obstacles, and sharing experiences between Tripletex and FabricAI. Together during this time period, we went through the following process:  

1. Concept creation
2. Planning 
3. Knowledge sharing and brainstorming
4. Analyzing key market learnings 
5. Creating go-to-market strategy
6. Development execution and iteration
7. Product launch!

The teams had weekly meetings, in-person workshops in Norway, and additional calls whenever Tripletex felt like they wanted additional support in the process. Even though digital meetings are great and enable an immediate way to stay in touch, we found meeting up in-person highly valuable.

“I think the collaboration has been really good and it has always been easy letting the other party know if there is something we need or is holding us back or taking longer than anticipated. We’re always there for each other.”

Now that the solution is published Tripletex can provide more efficient invoice processing for over 80  000 customers in Norway. 

The automation solution created a good foundation for making accounting more efficient

Now having published the progressive invoice automation to customers is not the end of our story with FabricAI – it is only the beginning.

“We have a good foundation to build on and we have done so much work to get the integration in place. Now we can take a breather since the biggest burden is off our shoulders. Moving forward, we can finally start building on top of that and creating more value. It has been a big milestone to get here and we can finally provide functionality for our customers, which is inspiring.”