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The automated accountant
In episode 5 of the Cat!apult podcast, finance departments are turned upside down. Julien Falco, Head of Product at the Swiss start-up Yokoy, wants to automate the entire spend management of medium-sized and larger companies with artificial intelligence.
by Tobias Imbach
You don't have to have anything to do with accounting to be fascinated by the project of the Swiss start-up Yokoy: fully automated billing of expenses? Bills that are paid automatically? This is exactly what the automation of spend management is supposed to make possible with the help of artificial intelligence.
In the Cat!apult podcast, Julien Falco, Head of Product at Yokoy, talks about how simplified expense management gave rise to an idea that could change and improve the day-to-day work of accountants in medium-sized and large companies worldwide - and how deeply AI is anchored in Yokoy's DNA.
SAID & NOTED
We don’t want only to digitize spend management, we want to automate it.
We’re not here to make accountants obsolete – quite the opposite. We want to make sure they can focus on what’s really important.
We extract the information (from receipts, invoices, and documents) and we use machine learning to understand the context of these documents. That allows us to automate more than 80% of all transactions through Yokoy.
Our trust in AI is quite high - we keep learning from millions of expanses from our customers, so we get better. We will gain more trusts and will have less and less exceptions.
We invest a lot of our revenue in improving our AI model – because we are an AI company. This was the vision of our founders early on.
The company was founded around the promise that AI can automate processes.
Julien Falco
Yokoy Group AG, Zürich
Experienced in developing digital products in various environments, from small start-ups to multinational companies, Julien Falco joined Yokoy Group AG in April 2021 as Head of Product. Today and in the past, he has always focused on one thing in particular: "user centric design". Julien Falco is a man of distinct talents, not only does he excel at optimising and modernising spend management, he also feels at home in the snow: he used to be a professional snowboarder, today he organises the "Nendaz Freeride", one of the biggest freeride competitions in the world.
