Gazelle company Eye-share builds trust and success with XAI

With revenue that has been increasing for 20 years, Eye-share AS has found the solution on how to meet customer demands.

By Anja Lillerud, April 22, 2022


AI SIMPLIES ACCOUNTING: Kai-Ronny Mydland is the R&D Director of Eye-share AS. The Stavanger-based company has a portfolio of three main products designed to meet professional economic demands for a more efficient way of working without compromising accuracy. PHOTO: Eye-share

When being responsible for the daily income and expenses of a company, you depend on having total control of and knowing the causality of the figures presented to you.

Eye-share’s portfolio of three main products is designed to meet economical professionals’ demands for a more efficient way of working without compromising accuracy. The eye-share Capture solution is an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system enabling automatic data extraction by digitizing text from documents from sources such as paper, image and PDF files. Eye-share Workflow solution offers a complete automated Purchase-to-Pay solution giving full overview and control through a user-friendly and cloud-based software platform. The eye-share Portal solution is a supplier portal for better collaboration between the buyer and the supplier through digital interaction in the purchasing process.

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This mock-up shows the dashboard of eye-share Workflow on a computer screen.

20 years of progress

To be able to solve these challenges that unstructured, unavailable data represents to important economy fundtions, Eye-share has since 2001 been working closely with their costumers to improve their products and the technology behind – and succeeded in doing so.

– The company has experienced great growth over the past years with increased revenues and a lot of development potential, and last year we were awarded the Gazelle award for the second time. With more than 100 employees Eye-share has both national and international enterprises in the portfolio which we are very proud of, says Kai-Ronny Mydland, R&D Director at Eye-share.

A significant Eye-share customer is NorgesGruppen, one of Norway’s leading trading houses within retail, with more than 20.000 inbound invoices per day and an automation degree of 90 percent. A perfect example of an enterprise committing to automation and how crucial the accuracy and reliability of technology is when handling many transactions within a short time frame.

There is no room for failure.

From black box to “glass box”

The key factor in developing a reliable AI-software and building a trust-based relationship with the end user, is by enabling explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). XAI brings the traditional AI technology from a black box perspective without the possibility to verify the result, to a transparent level which allows the user to control and validate the results both during and after the process, which instils trust, efficiency, and reliability.

– XAI shows you the connections and choices made along the way, which are the reasoning behind the result. In our experience this enables the enterprises to outline their financial resources in a better way since they adopt to the AI solution much faster. Trust is key, if they do not trust the outcome and the results from the AI processing, they will stick to manually maintaining rules for as long as they can, explains Mydland.

The black box technology is often subject of great debate regarding trust and reliability. The AI process finds all its answers in the data, but how do you know if you can trust the results presented to you? With XAI the user is given insight and control.

– Different opinions regarding AI

The Eye-share software suite is a designed to support the financial business role. Automation has always been important. Despite technological changes and opportunities in new technology, the company experiences that one of the biggest jobs now is to convince the customers of the benefits using artificial intelligence and help them adopt the technology in their company.

– When meeting the market, we encounter different opinions regarding AI. For many, it is difficult to let go of hands-on control and have confidence in technology and the software. By showing them how we use XAI and our results, most companies realize how much they can benefit from the technology, says Mydland.

At the international conference AI+ in Halden 3-4 May, the Eye-share employed advisor and AI enthusiast Jan Erik Gausdal will be talking about XAI and the Eye-share software.

– We find it important to participate on arenas regarding AI and the use of this technology. AI+ is an interesting conference gathering both national and international actors in the industry and we are attending to discuss, learn, inform, and enlighten, says Kai-Ronny Mydland, R&D Director at Eye-share.

Kai Mydland
INTERESTING CONFERENCE: – AI+ is an interesting conference and we find it imporant to participate on arenas regarding AI, says Kai-Ronny Mydland. PHOTO: Eye-share