Basware Launches Approval Confidence Index To Its Procurement Tech

Electronic invoicing firm Basware announced that it has added a machine learning-enabled, predictive capability to its procurement technology. The idea for its Approval Confidence Index (ACI) was introduced during the company’s “hack day,” and is a score assigned to every item on a requisition to provide the probability of that item being approved.

“The system leverages transaction history and machine-learning capabilities to evaluate the parameters that result in an approval or rejection. The model utilizes data specific to the customer, which results in an ACI prediction that is unique to that customer. Companies can be assured that the ACI is customized to their process, products, vendors and services. Of course, machine learning is as good as the data it has access to, so the more data that is available, the more accurate the model is. The system will also update the model periodically to continuously improve the prediction results,” said Bhavin Shah, director of product management at Basware, in a press release.

The service can ultimately lead to behavior changes. Requisitioners receive instant feedback on the probability of an item being approved and, if that score is low, they can select different items or vendors, or provide appropriate justification to increase the chances of approval. For approvers, ACI allows them to speed up the process and prioritize transactions for review.

“The longer-term vision is that the system would become so ‘smart’ that it could automatically process routine transactions so that the approver would only need to approve the exceptions, saving even more time. The ACI is a first step in [toward] that goal,” added Shah.

Last year, Basware revealed that it had integrated B2B payment capabilities into its product offering NetworkPay. The tool supports check, ACH, virtual card and wire payments for corporate users through a unified platform to eliminate the manual processing costs of cutting paper checks.