Mehiläinen has really worked on developing its financial administration during the past couple of years. Financial systems have been renewed, new integrations have been implemented, and they’ve even started increasingly looking into robotics.

In this modernization wave, Mehiläinen decided to be among the first to implement the AI-based Snowfox.AI service in March 2019. After a year of using it, Development Manager Roope Rauhalinna says: “I’m proud that we’ve been among the first to hop on board this train and using AI to automate our purchase invoice process.”

Smooth cooperation and speeding up the closing of accounts

Previously it was a challenge to get all invoices handled before their due dates. When implementing Snowfox.AI, one of Mehiläinen’s goals was to speed up the invoice handling process and cycle. Simultaneously, the idea was to cut down on manual administrative tasks and minimize errors on the business side.

Both goals were reached, and additionally, the Snowfox.AI service also sped up the process of closing the accounts. When the invoices that were missing their postings and approvals already had the posting suggestions from the AI, it really lightened the bookkeepers’ manual workloads. The corporation consists of over 80 individual companies, and making the closing of accounts lighter and easier is a great achievement.

This would not have been possible without smooth communication with Snowfox.AI. When piloting an entirely new service, the importance of communication is especially highlighted: ”We are really pleased with the customer support and service in general. Things have gone really well overall with the people from Snowfox.AI.”

Freeing up time from accounts payable, thanks to automatic routing

Previously, the purpose of accounts payable was to figure out the invoice auditor from the contents of the invoice, until Mehiläinen implemented the automatic routing of Snowfox.AI in September 2019. “We get invoices from a fragmented field of invoicers, and the contents of invoices vary a lot. Due to this, we couldn’t make automatic routing work on the desired level,” Roope Rauhalinna explains. “Now with Snowfox.AI, around 90% of our invoices are routed automatically. This has really exceeded our expectations, and significantly decreased all manual work related to accounts payable,” he continues.

The handling of purchase invoices is, out of all financial administration tasks, the best suited for AI-automation testing

At Mehiläinen, it has quickly become clear that out of all financial administration tasks, the handling of purchase invoices is an ideal task for artificial intelligence. This is mainly because the process is generic, and includes large amounts of data and repetitions, which can easily be automated. “These characteristics make these tasks the best suited to be automated first,” explains Roope. 

There are other reasons too. The handling of purchase invoices requires a lot of manual work, both related to accounts payable as well as on the business side. It’s usually the most time-consuming task in financial administration. With AI, it’s possible to save multiple euros per purchase invoice. 

With Snowfox.AI, Roope especially values that instead of looking at the cooperation as a project, it’s an ongoing service. If they were to handle the job on their own, there’d be a risk that the development would stop. 

Working with Snowfox.AI, Mehiläinen is also able to help them further develop as a company.“This way, we can focus on automating other administrative tasks, because we aren’t running out of those any time soon”, laughs Roope.