This is the end of the world as software companies know it, but this CEO feels okay.
Judging by what some AI experts are saying and the state of the stock market, you would think that software companies are taking their final steps. Jason Kurtz, CEO of Basware, which sells software for financial processes, sees this a little differently.
“Let me tell you, there’s nothing in the data that we’re looking at that indicates that,” Kurtz said.
“We didn’t have any customers who said, ‘Oh, we’re going to figure this out on our own and use OpenAI or someone to do the AP.’ That’s not how these companies work,” he added.
Mr. Kurtz contacted me last week after I asked for reader feedback on this topic. (I read all your emails seriously, even the mean ones!)
Basware, which counts Mercedes and Heineken among its roughly 6,500 customers and uses AI within its products, has so far seen no threat. Kurtz told me that he expects the company’s 2025 sales to increase 20% year over year, mainly due to a sharp increase in the second half of the year.
He acknowledged that there have been conversations about customers experimenting with AI themselves. But these days, clients only want results.
Kurz recalled a conversation he had with the head of digital transformation at a large European company. “I can’t point to a single penny that we’ve saved, earned or contributed to the business in any way,” the executive, who has spent about 1 million euros on internal AI-related projects in the finance sector over the past year, told Kurz.
“We’re tired of experimenting. We need someone who knows how to use AI in workflow processes,” Kurz said an executive told him.
I asked Kurtz for advice for other software companies looking to protect themselves.
Basware primarily works with AWS to help build AI tools for its customers. Kurtz said the company also has an “AI czar” overseeing the industry. Finding ways to implement AI into your products that creates more value for your customers is one way to stay ahead.
There is also power in numbers. Kurtz said maintaining tight integration with other vendors to be part of the workflow creates stickiness.
“I would have been even more paranoid if we hadn’t done that,” Kurtz said.
And then there are the data elements. Over its 40-year history, Basware has processed 2.5 billion invoices and €10 trillion in expenditures. This large amount of information can help you train your models and identify new efficiencies to market to your customers.
“I think if you don’t have a data strategy around AI, it’s going to be difficult to figure out how to leverage that to differentiate your AI and capabilities,” he said.
