Viking Assistance Group: Streamlining AP processing with SEMINE

For nearly 70 years, Viking has been dedicated to getting stranded motorists back on the road. Here’s the story of how their finance department leveraged the AI solution SEMINE to streamline their operations, supporting the company’s growth strategy—along with tips for those looking to do the same.

If your car has ever broken down or had a flat tire while traveling, there's a good chance you're familiar with Viking Assistance Group. Viking, as the company is now known, has 320 service stations in its network across the Nordics. The company handles 1.6 million calls, performs around 500,000 assistances annually, and proudly boasts a 97% customer satisfaction rate.

Bente Karlsrud Gjersøe, Head of Accounting, and Hilde Markussen, Accounting Consultant at Viking Assistance Group, have been using SEMINE over the past year to organize and optimize their invoice processing workflows. The results have been remarkable: three steps in the approval process have been eliminated, international operations can now be managed from the same system as the Norwegian branch, and 65-80% of invoice handling is now automated. This has saved the department a significant amount of time, allowing them to better support the company's growth process.

Streamlining workflows

– When I started at Viking a year ago, there was little automation in the invoice processing and the existing workflows were not optimal, says Markussen.

– Over the past year, I’ve focused on optimizing these workflows and creating new ones. We’ve also integrated our foreign entities—Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Estonia—onto a single platform. This means we no longer work in different systems; everything is handled directly in SEMINE,” she adds.

Additional tasks have included improving supplier workflows and setting up more automated approvals for items like rent or other recurring bills with consistent invoices each month. This frees up time for Markussen and her colleagues to focus on more complex invoices that require a thorough review.

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Engaging with suppliers

– We’ve also built an approval hierarchy that follows the corporate hierarchy. It’s based on department managers, first and second approvers, where you can set amount limits, departments, and other criteria for entire groups. This is much easier to maintain if someone leaves, and it also significantly increases efficiency in combination with the improved supplier workflows, Markussen continues.

Additionally, they’ve worked extensively with EHF invoices and focused on issues that don’t get processed automatically. The task has been to identify why the automation fails and to contact suppliers to resolve the issues. The problem often lies in incomplete or incorrect references from the buyer. We’re addressing this now, she explains.

We are exploring solutions to use different types of references and are specifically working with one company on this. Many approvers are involved in the invoices, so we can take steps to reduce the potential for errors. For example, we can use department numbers as aliases for the references, allowing the system to match both names and departments. This has been my focus over the past year, really diving into the details

Results that matter

While this may not sound like the most exciting work, the motivation to do it comes from the significant efficiencies it creates in the processes.

– As mentioned, we now achieve between 65% and 80% automation in our workflows—and now that the foreign entities are integrated, we no longer have to operate in two systems, Markussen states.

We save a lot of time because SEMINE uses artificial intelligence (AI) for coding. When the system recognizes things, we no longer have to search for the correct ledger account or department. This recognition also saves a lot of time in the supplier workflows that go to the same approvers.

– All of this allows us to focus on the special cases or those invoices that require more controlling, she continues.

Gjersøe adds,

– We’ve managed to significantly reduce the time we spend on invoices. Previously, we had to handle every single invoice, scan them from paper, and manually send them out for approval. Now, three of those steps are completely gone, and we no longer have to move paper invoices around. The time we save can now be used on other, more specialized tasks.

 

Continuous improvement

Markussen emphasizes the importance of maintaining SEMINE to continuously extract maximum value:  – For example, I generate reports every month to see how our workflows are performing, and I focus on those with less than 80% automation to see how they can be improved. This is a continuous job, but it yields good results, she says.

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A new way of thinking

This approach represents a significant shift in how finance departments are expected to operate, prompting a critical evaluation of existing workflows. Where can processes be optimized? How can tasks be improved? What functionalities in the solution can be leveraged to work smarter? For Viking, as a growing company, this approach has been essential.

Gjersøe explains:

– We are now present in multiple countries, and our business has expanded beyond just roadside assistance. To support the company in this transition, we needed to reorganize and work differently.

We’ve spent the last year focusing on this, and it’s an area where we’ve made substantial gains, she adds.

– Previously, we had two people working in SEMINE every day. Now, we’re down to one person—and we’re getting more out of the solution, she says.

This has made us better equipped to support the company during its growth phase, and we also see significant potential in using SEMINE for analysis in the future. This includes improving cash flow management and gaining earlier insights into our costs. Our goal is to be an even greater support function and help the company make better decisions based on more up-to-date information. We have a plan for this, and we see SEMINE as a system that can help us achieve it,  Gjersøe concludes