2022 was the year when AI really came into the public consciousness. A steady stream of new and increasingly impressive versions of graphical tools such as DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were released. Towards the end of the year, textual tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT were released, which turned many people’s expectations of what artificial intelligence can achieve on their heads.
Together, these developments have unleashed brand-new discussions about the benefits and opportunities that AI can offer businesses. One thing is clear: this is only the beginning. As artificial intelligence is at the core of the automation and improvements in efficiency that we offer our customers, this rapid development is part of our working day now. We have a strong position in this niche, and we have a solid value message for our customers and partners.
Nevertheless, for everyone at Semine, it is vital that we continue to push forward and develop. For this reason, I would like to discuss four areas on which we will focus in 2023.
We will continue to develop our algorithms and models for AI, to create even more automation for our customers and increase our edge over our competitors. In 2022, our solution demonstrated its strengths at almost 9,000 companies, and we are busy further improving our functionality to help our customers achieve further automation – including through even better matching of invoices to contracts and purchase orders using our AI engine.
We also launched plug-and-play integration with even more leading ERP systems during the year. As a result, whether your business uses one of the many Visma systems (including PowerOffice and Tripletex) or solutions from providers such as Microsoft, Xledger, Unit4, Uni Micro or SAP, Semine offers you the shortest and safest route to automatic invoice processing.
Our annual revenue for 2022 will soon be announced. In the meantime, I can tell you that by the end of last year we had passed 35,000 unique monthly users for our solution. That means we are now influencing and simplifying the working day of almost 2 per cent of employees in Norway – an increase of 62 per cent against 2021!
Our solid growth in 2022 will continue this year. We have ambitious goals and high sales targets: new sales in Norway are to grow by 50 per cent, partly by means of an increased focus on expert partners. We will also establish sales divisions in two new countries this year, with preparations already well underway in Sweden, and one other country set for 2023. As part of this commitment, we will also build integrations to market-leading ERP solutions and finance systems in these countries.
For Semine, one of our core values is that our customers should find our services to be of high quality and achieve positive visible results in short order. However, this does not just depend on what our solution does, but also on how our customers adapt their internal processes and working methods to benefit from the opportunities that the technology offers.
In 2023, we will therefore continue helping our customers leverage the greatest possible value from our solutions, whether they purchased the solution from us or through one of our partners. We will make it easier for them to achieve results, and we will respond even more quickly when they need assistance.
Our solid, secure and long-term owners, led by Kistefos Venture Capital, will stand by the investments that have been made in Semine in recent years, come what may. Together with our owners, we have drawn up a plan to ensure that we will be able to continue to develop the SEMINE platform, deliver excellent results in the market, and remain a reliable partner for our customers.
To reinforce our position as an internationally competitive software provider, we will reinvest our ongoing revenue in product development and further expansion. Semine’s financial development is good: we are aiming at a net positive cash flow towards the end of the year and are well positioned to stay on course with the plan we have created with our owners.
When I took on the role of CEO of Semine in November 2022, I had already been following the company “from the outside” – with great interest – for a long time. Right from my first day “on the inside” at Semine, I have been impressed by our excellent team and outstanding products.
Semine is clearly positioned as one of Norway’s leading players in utilising and contributing to the rapid development in artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, the core of our work remains unchanged: we will continue to deliver value for our customers and be an important partner in their work to achieve increased insight and lower costs, whether we do that in direct contact with our customers or through our brilliant partners.