"JAFCO Soken" is a series that researches topics such as trends, phenomena, and data occurring in the Japanese startup area from a JAFCO perspective.
The 4th seminar was held under the theme of "DX starting from invoice processing" with Yoshinori Fukushima, who founded Gunosy Co., Ltd. while attending graduate school and is currently the representative director of LayerX Inc. bottom.
[Speaker profile] (honorific title omitted)
Yoshinori Fukushima, CEO of LayerX Inc.
Graduated from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Engineering. My majors in college were computer science and machine learning. Founded Gunosy Co., Ltd. while attending graduate school in 2012, assumed the post of representative director, and listed on TSE Mothers about two and a half years after its founding. Later, the market was changed to the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Appointed CEO of Layer X in 2018. 2012 IPA unexplored super creator certification. Selected as one of Asia's leading "under 30" by Forbes Asia in 2016. Received the Best Paper Award at the 2017 Association for Natural Language Processing (co-authored). In June 2019, he became a director of the Japan Blockchain Association (JBA).
* Click here for past articles by LayerX Inc.
If DX is not promoted, the economic loss will be up to 12 trillion yen! ??
Fukushima LayerX, of which I am the representative, is developing the DX business, financial business, and privacy tech business with the philosophy of "digitizing all economic activities." We are developing tech-driven businesses such as providing the invoice AI cloud "LayerX Invoice" and the DX business of the financial industry in collaboration with Mitsui & Co., Ltd.
In recent years, corporate DX has been called for, but DX is more than just "digitalization." "Transforming a company's business digitally to create a competitive advantage." However, there are some issues in promoting DX. Since the existing system is built for each department and excessive customization is added, it is difficult to utilize data across the entire company. Even if the problem is solved, there are high hurdles that must be overcome in order to implement it, such as the need to restructure the business flow and the backlash from the person in charge at the site.
However, did you know that if these issues cannot be overcome, economic losses of up to 12 trillion yen per year may occur after 2025 (*).
On the other hand, recent environmental changes and technological improvements are boosting corporate digital transformation. Abolition of paper and stamps due to changes in laws and regulations such as the relaxation of the Electronic Bookkeeping Law in 2022 and the invoice system in 2023, environmental changes due to the corona disaster, work style reforms, improvement of AI technology and the spread of the cloud.・ There is no doubt that digitization will be further promoted.
* From the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry "DX Report-Overcoming the IT System" Cliff in 2025 "and Full-scale Deployment of DX-"
Now is the best time to digitize "invoice receiving business"
Fukushima How should we specifically promote DX? The basis of DX is to "transform corporate operations digitally", but there are only three corporate operations. "Front" that raises sales through customer contact points such as sales and marketing, "Middle" that supports decision making such as business management and data analysis,
There are three types of "back" that support company activities such as accounting, personnel labor, and contracts. And it is "core business" that crosses them.
The recommended order for promoting DX is back, front, middle and core business. The reason why the back office is the best for the first step is that it can be done simply by introducing SaaS for non-core business, and it is easy to produce results of business efficiency improvement and cost improvement in a short period of time. By getting a quick win, the momentum that "there is such a good thing when digitizing" is born within the organization, and you can also learn the know-how for digitizing.
Our invoice AI cloud "LayerX Invoice" is a service that can digitize "invoice receiving business" even in the back office.
Even in the age of remote work, "contracts," "invoices," and "approvals" (*) occupy the top causes of having to go to work. Among them, in the "invoice receiving business", when we interviewed more than 100 CFOs and accounting staff, they answered that analog work remained in the entire company.
In fact, the market for services that digitize the invoice "issuing" business is already mature, but there has never been a SaaS that can be "received".
This is because the services have finally been established in the last 1-2 years due to the deregulation of laws and regulations and the improvement of AI technology that I mentioned earlier. In other words, now is the best time to wipe out the analog work of the invoice receiving business and digitize it.
* From "freee, questionnaire survey on telework (conducted on April 23, 2020)"
"LayerX invoice" aiming for zero manual input
Fukushima "LayerX Invoice" aims to provide a service that completes invoice processing with "zero manual input". Invoice processing is the most manual input in accounting work, and it is an inefficient and error-prone task of manually inputting and double-checking while looking at the invoice.
Therefore, "LayerX Invoice" supports a series of processes such as "invoice collection", "data conversion", and "linkage with accounting system". If it takes 30 minutes to process an invoice and the hourly wage of the staff is 3000 yen, it will cost 150,000 yen to process 100 invoices, but the cost can be significantly reduced.
First, about "invoice collection". Invoices are delivered from business partners to each department, and the person in charge of each department transfers them to the accounting department using various tools, which makes it difficult for the accounting staff to manage them collectively. There are also troubles such as uncollected, unpaid, and the cost cannot be calculated accurately. "LayerX Invoice" has a function to alert the business partner when the invoice that should arrive every month is not collected, and the business partner can upload it directly.
Next, about "data conversion". The collected invoice is automatically read by AI-OCR and converted into data, and journal data is also automatically generated. Handwritten invoices can be converted into data without any problems as long as they are human-readable characters. We are confident in the reading accuracy and speed, and customers also said, "The other company's product was about 50 %, but the" LayerX invoice "was more than 90 % accurate." "The other company's product took 30 seconds, but" LayerX invoice " Was able to be converted into data in 5 seconds. " Sub-subjects and memo tags are also automatically supplemented from the invoice if there is a transaction even once in the past.
By the way, as the size of the company grows, there are cases where the invoice needs to be approved by the on-site manager. Therefore, we also make it possible to know the status of unapproved / approved. There has never been a service that links invoices and Rinyoshi. The time and effort required to process the invoice leads not only to accounting but also to the loss of opportunities at the site, so we hope to use it to improve the workflow.
Regarding "linkage with accounting systems," we can seamlessly link with typical accounting systems, and we will gradually support other accounting systems.
Scheduled to support relaxation of the Electronic Bookkeeping Law in 2022
Fukushima "LayerX Invoice" consistently covers "invoice receiving agency", "scanning agency", "input / data conversion", "automatic journal entry", "approval / workflow", "payment", and "accounting system linkage". At the moment, we are the only service that can support the efficiency of accounting operations other than "input / data conversion". We are planning to support the relaxation of the Electronic Bookkeeping Law in 2022, so if you introduce the service by then, you will be able to realize paperless office without any special measures.
I think that the number of invoice receiving SaaS will increase in the future. However, it is necessary to confirm whether the accuracy of AI, which is the core of the service, is sufficient. If you do not operate a service of a certain scale, the accuracy will be quite low, and I think it will be difficult to enter a completely new market. We recommend that you carefully compare the accuracy when considering the introduction of the service.
Our company is an engineer-centered company, and we mainly develop toC services from business systems, and other members are involved. I am confident in the intuitive and easy-to-use UI, because if it is difficult to use, the service will be withdrawn immediately. We hope that you can contribute to the advancement of your DX through "LayerX Invoice".
