Case Fleet Innovation: Automation as a Driver for Growth and Smarter Ways of Working

Fleet Innovation, a uniquely positioned player in the corporate car leasing market in Finland, has grown at a tremendous pace.

To support growth, the company has automated several processes and tasks so that employees can focus on what really matters—to serve the company's customer base in the best possible way. One of the means of automation is robotic process automation, for which Fleet Innovation found the right partner in Efima offering UiPath technology.

As Fleet's business grew, the number of purchase invoices processed by the company also increased, which led to an increase in the personnel’s workload. This begged the question of whether the processing of purchase invoices could be handled more efficiently. Robotic process automation (RPA) was identified as a possible solution to the problem, and the company soon began implementing its first UiPath software robot together with Efima.

Jenna Rahunen, Finance Manager at Fleet, considers the processing of purchase invoices to be an excellent target for the first RPA implementations, as the process involves a lot of repetitive and labor-intensive manual work. “Before automation, we had customer managers posting invoices, and this didn’t feel like a smart way to use their time. RPA was identified as a solution that would agilely scale with our business,” she says. In addition, automation was seen as a way to improve the quality of invoice processing at Fleet:

In repetitive routine work, a person always makes some mistakes, but the robot can be expected to follow the rules without exceptions.

Jenna Rahunen • Finance Manager, Fleet Innovation

The automation of purchase invoices has also yielded results, as currently, the robot processes 45% of the company's 6,000 monthly purchase invoices. “This is a really big help for a company of our size, and we’ve already made plans for the next year. Automation plays a big role in our growth plans,” Jenna says with satisfaction. Next, UiPath robots are also taking over the role of supporting Fleet's customer service, e.g. in the form of automated customer-facing routine communications.

Automation plays a big role in our growth plans.

Jenna Rahunen • Finance Manager, Fleet Innovation

Jenna is also pleased with how well the possibilities of automation have been received within the company. “As our vehicle fleet grows, so does the amount of work. Everyone here realizes that their time could be used more efficiently, instead of doing routine chores,” she says. And there has been no lack of enthusiasm to improve things.

Our people really strive to make processes as efficient as possible, and there has been no resistance to change at any point. Rather, everyone wants to get involved in the development of automation.

Jenna Rahunen • Finance Manager, Fleet Innovation

Openness and transparency are qualities that we at Fleet Innovation value in a partnership. “We’re not just paying for a service, there’s something deeper than that. People at Efima know our business, suggest development ideas and dare to say openly if something should be done differently,” she describes the partnership.

For others who are thinking about automation, Jenna Rahunen has tips to share from her own experience. “If there are a lot of repetitive routines at work and resources are tight, that’s always a place to think about automation. From a customer satisfaction perspective, automation is really important because it frees us from routines to serve our customers better,” she concludes.

Automation is really important because it frees us from routines to serve our customers better.

Jenna Rahunen • Finance Manager, Fleet Innovation