Intelligent Document Processing Podcast - Episode #2: Urs Kälin, Managing director at simplyfile

For the second episode, the CEO of Parashift, Alain Veuve, has welcomed one of his partners at Parashift’s office, Urs Kälin, Managing director at simplyfile

They exchanged views on the current vision of their company and the future of IDP and digital transformation.

What about simplyfile?

simplyfile is a Swiss company founded in 2020 in Switzerland and is considered a solution integrator that supports its customers towards a fast and efficient digital transition. As an official reseller of M-Files in Switzerland, they offer a holistic solution with different modules from the input and extraction of data to a concise interface serving as a central information management platform. It allows customers to save time by consolidating all internal company documents, emails etc. in one place to reduce search time by up to 30 minutes per day.

simplyfile website: https://www.simplyfile.ch/

What about Parashift?

Parashift is a machine learning company that has taken on the topic of document capture. Its product, the Parashift Platform, is a cloud-based document extraction solution that uses IDP technology to read relevant data from any document. By using its proprietary Document Swarm Learning technology, companies can gradually automate all their document processes.

In the process, employees team up with the Parashift Platform to integrate document data into processes and systems super quickly and cost-effectively. The platform learns from all interactions and thus comes closer to complete autonomy step by step. So everything at Parashift is focused on making this technological milestone a reality. The team is not pursuing other topics. Alain Veuve says, “We’re not an end-to-end solution, so we’re working with a lot of companies that can do vertical integrations.”

Transcript

[00:00 - 00:18] Intro.

[00:18 - 00:30] Alain Veuve, CEO of Parashift: Yes, welcome to the Intelligent Document Processing Podcast, another episode. I have with me today Urs Kälin from simplyfile. Urs, welcome to our site.

[00:30 - 00:32] Urs Kälin, Managing Director of simplyfile: Alain.

[00:32 - 00:34] Alain Veuve: Who are you?

[00:34 - 01:03] Urs Kälin: An introduction that's not too long...Urs Kälin, I'm a native of Central Switzerland, I grew up in Zurich and I'm now in Eastern Switzerland. And now more and more in the field of digitalization. It's become a bit of a passion, for us internally, but also for the customers. And so my main area of activity now is actually to support customers in this process. So much briefly about my path.

[01:03 - 01:21] Alain Veuve: We got to know each other...so we work together, I think that's fair to say and that's also well known...So I understood that simplyfile is a spin-off of another company that's actually not that deep into digitalization. How did that come about?

[01:21 - 02:07] Urs Kälin: It's always interesting to hear the picture from the outside. No, it actually came about because the company Pius Schäfler, well-known in eastern Switzerland, actually the top dog there, has an excellent customer base, several thousand customers in B2B and B2C. And more and more customers have asked, "What do I do with my data? I'm already kind of in the scanning space." And that's when you started accompanying customers in this process in this area, but you did it all with partners, with suppliers in the back. And then it's logical that you also lose the relationship with the customers. And that was actually the main decisive point, that we said: "Yes, we're starting with digitization, but we're not mixing it with everything else that we have, that would be untrustworthy, but we're founding simplyfile AG as a group company."

[02:07 - 02:09] Alain Veuve: And there you took the lead.

[02:09 - 02:29] Urs Kälin: I took the lead. Actually, I got the lead because I have been accompanying this company for a long time on various topics. And there was just the question, "Hey, do you have an idea how we could do this?" And I said, "Yes, I could accompany you in this process." And so the idea grew, the concept grew, and now finally simplyfile as its own AG, as its own company.

[02:29 - 02:31] Alain Veuve: How big are you today?

[02:31 - 02:40] Urs Kälin: Today we are 7.6 people on the way to 10 people and you know how it is Alain, these are growing pains...

[02:40 - 02:41] Alain Veuve: ...yes, unfortunately too good.

[02:41 - 03:06] Urs Kälin: You're like a "misshapen young dog" that grows and never really, so...it's a feat also for my mother company, from 0 to 10 people, you have to keep saying, "Hey, it's going great and let's invest again." It's really going great, but we're growing, we're building up, we're creating structures, these processes that I think Parashift also went through, a little bit with a head start, but also...

[03:06 - 03:23] Alain Veuve: Yes, yes exactly, the growing pains, I know them unfortunately too well, which come in the different flavors... Where are you today? Which customers do you advise and support, to whom do you bring digitization solutions? What is the typical customer?

[03:23 - 04:00] Urs Kälin: Yes, that's already a simple question, which I actually try to answer briefly. At the base, I don't need sales because we can take the group's customer base. That means Sales comes to me: "Hey Urs, come with me, the customer wants to digitize something." And that's one of those areas that is then open. Then I go and tell them what we mean by that. That means we don't have sales and I have the group customers that I have and there is everything, so from law firms, trusts, industrial customers, mostly SMEs, but not only, but already actually smaller and medium-sized companies that we accompany in this process. That is also the main clientele.

[04:00 - 04:17] Alain Veuve: And where does that start? Does it start at the very beginning, with the realization, "Okay, we have to do something in the direction of digitization." and you then accompany them there or at the point where one, I say, "goes beyond to action" and implements a solution?  How do I have to think of that?

[04:17 - 04:50] Urs Kälin: I always say the earlier the better. Even if the field is then open, not so immediately clear. But the more that the customer asks us "What would you see?", that's actually for me the most sympathetic process. But honestly, hand on heart, we don't kick the green field anymore. A lot of customers are already on the road with digital initiatives, have already done a few things. Then we get on board and then we have to understand relatively quickly where the customer stands, what does he already have, what makes sense, but also what doesn't make sense.

[04:50 - 05:57] Alain Veuve: Yes, that's exciting. I've spent quite a bit of my life in digitization at the sales and consulting level and worked with a lot of big companies and I've actually always been quite frustrated by all this...not so nice to say maybe...bit of "innovation theater" that there was for a long time. That you just kind of said in advance "We have to, the strategy, and this is all very important and this is the future." But if you then looked at what happened de facto in the process itself or in reality, what ended up in the company, then it was usually relatively little. Budgets were also spoken about very hesitantly. That was five years ago. I then started working with smaller companies back then and realized "Hey, they're kind of skipping all the "vision stuff," up front, but they're pretty active when it comes to using digital tools for themselves." How do you perceive that? Do you feel the SMBs are efficient in using digital opportunities?

[05:57 - 06:50] Urs Kälin: Yes, I think in part it's almost arrogant when you come in as a solution provider and say "I'll digitize you..." I've noticed that the SMEs have not only already done a great deal and are now, and you're right, five years back, ten years back, totally much further ahead. They have this on their agenda, they have invested in various tools and applications. I sense an extreme change from fifteen years ago to today. In other words, I don't remember any date where we said, "This is not an issue for us." That doesn't exist for me, it really doesn't, it doesn't. And then we just have to look at where we start, is it just the inbox process. So the relatively trivial step to digitize, to channel from incoming mail physically to digitally. Or then really the big guns with everything that we can and want to do, if we have the opportunity to do so. But the change is extreme that I sense.

[06:50 - 07:00] Alain Veuve: So where is your focus there? Is it mainly on the documents now? I know you're very prominent with M-Files, we've also become big fans of M-Files...

[07:00 - 07:01] Urs Kälin: Glad to hear.

[07:01 - 07:10] Alain Veuve: How do I have to imagine that, where does it start, where does it end?

[07:10 - 08:04] Urs Kälin: Yes, in essence it starts with the terminology of DMS, ECM, all these abbreviations are extremely difficult from the customer's point of view and often they are then reduced to a DMS document management solution. But today it is much more. Today it is about data, information, business processes. But it also goes to agenda "How do I supply my customers with information?" So there it's not just efficiency, there I'm also on the eCommerce track, how I can exchange the data and information. That's where it gets extremely exciting, because then we really have the "whole field", everything is here on the table, the whole business. We're not management consultants, although our customers always push us into that role a little bit, but we're not. We just have to separate ourselves a little bit there. But nevertheless, today we accompany customers on this path after five, six, seven years and there we are on the agenda somewhere completely different than the accounts payable workflow or anything where we started.

[08:04 - 08:44] Alain Veuve: That's exciting what you say, "We're not management consultants." I've heard the inverse saying a lot from Big Four representatives who used to say, "We're not implementers." Today, it's the case that I have the feeling that the Big Four in particular do quite a bit of implementation and the customer is also increasingly averse to, I'll say, consuming pure management consulting without there also being implementation. That might still be a field of its own in strategy consulting, but like...you say you're being pushed into it. Can you resist that at all? Or is that really what you guys want as well?

[08:44 - 09:58] Urs Kälin: Ultimately, you also want to see a certain business model, a business opportunity. Then we check this and that's where we are right now. I talked about ten people, two people with me now are customer developers, I lost them, they work at customer sites. They have badges from the customer. Big law firm, big industrial companies and I don't have them anymore, they're paid one and a half times but they accompany the customers on this process because he knows the processes internally, he's asked, "Do you have an idea how we could do this?" and then he thinks about it and then we form that. We have already slipped a little bit there, I still say it...I went through before with you, say, this is my department Customer Success Management, I think it's cool, the Happiness Manager, how you want to say it...We are fully in the topic Customer Success Management, in that we accompany the customer today and the customer trusts us after a few years and he doesn't want to bring in another consultant from outside, as you also actually mentioned. Yes, we feel that a little bit, but there you also have to look or, we don't go to a UBS Switzerland and say we advise...You also always have to look a little bit that you can get the story across to the customers.

[09:58 - 10:51] Alain Veuve: How long does such a project or such an accompaniment last? I've spent quite a bit of time in IT and I've actually gotten away from "billing by time", although that's a model that's still commonplace. Because I actually always thought it might be better to do a retainer that just includes certain responsibilities and I could actually try to, of course project work is project work, but you said before, you have clients that you've been accompanying for a very long time...in the consulting that I do, that's actually how we did it, that we switched to a retainer model because we just said "You pay a monthly fee and we just see that we can do as much as we can and then if it kind of gets completely out of hand, then you talk again in confidence. .." How do you see those models? How are you guys doing today?

[10:51 - 12:13] Urs Kälin: Well, I've also been in this business for a few years, I've also learned to price project, to estimate feasibility check, 15 days effort and we are totally turned away from that. I've also learned that, I have a software developer on my team, my CTO, and he's already thinking like an architect, saying, "I'll build you something, I don't know exactly how long I have for it." Today we work in contingency. He starts with the customer, that we have understood the context to some extent, and says: "Look customer, we make a contingent of 20 days, that's enough for 4 months and we build as far as we can. And then when 80% is used up, then we say, "Hey, what do we do again." And that's an extremely sympathetic process, because we've also noticed in the project.... "Can we do that?" And then we say, "No, we didn't agree on that," and then maybe it has added value, then we do that and tell the customer officially. And at the back, however, we had to follow up structurally on the whole ticketing reporting, where we are actually quite cleverly positioned today, where we can say on a monthly basis and not on a 15-minute basis, like a support, that we have done this, these are the packages...We also think in terms of service packages today. And we have made a total mindshift in the last three months. But it was also a further development for me, because I had to change a little bit and I think it's actually really cool how it works right now.

[12:13 - 12:20] Alain Veuve: Exciting, exciting. Now when you do Intelligent Document Processing like this....

[12:20 - 12:22] Urs Kälin: Difficult word already...

[12:22 - 12:24] Alain Veuve: Actually, we should always say IDP...

[12:24 - 12:26] Urs Kälin: I don't know if anyone understands that except us...

[12:26 - 13:37] Alain Veuve: No, that's also a little bit our mission or my personal mission, to try to use this term...there's quite a lot of movement in it yes and I think we're getting technologically closer and closer to a step where, how should I say, the paradigm is shifting, away from all this configuring to we have standards and we can just consume these standards. What we're doing at Parashift is just aimed at that. How do you see the importance of IDP for digitization? When I first started here, I had the feeling that many people in decision-making processes don't even know about the importance of documents. That is, of document processes. And when I look today, there are now many pretty good studies on this, it's just the case that digital transformation projects are often actually so set back because documents are stuck somewhere that can be automated very badly or almost not at all. Do you feel like there's movement in that mindset?

[13:37 - 14:54] Urs Kälin: I think it used to be more of a stumbling block, because these projects took a very long time, with these on-prem installations and document learning, which somehow took days per document and was a very static story. A lot has been accomplished because we have noticed over the last two years...actually, we came across you, Parashift, by chance. A customer didn't have a budget and heard about Parashift, that you can already read out individual documents. Then we started with a wastewater treatment plant, I can't even say with five employees, I don't want to say any names now... We were dealing with 100 creditors per month. Actually, you can also type it out by hand. And then it just went through so easily and without these long start-up times, which used to be a killer for these projects. And that also actually just at the beginning brought us the realization that we can read out every template today, extract it, work with the data. And when we tell customers that, they realize "aha, that's possible, I can take out the delivery bill, somehow the order number, aha that's possible...". Then you have to accompany the customer a bit and show them how it works.

[14:54 - 14:56] Alain Veuve: Do new ideas also arise from the customer?

[14:56 - 15:17] Urs Kälin: Ah yes, of course. Last year I had a big customer at Lake Constance, I wanted to bring our heart product closer to him, he said: "Urs, that's not an issue, you know, the budget next year." And then I said, "we have another topic, we could also read out orders." And there was just a pause on the other side. Because this customer hired five people today to type out customer orders.

[15:17 -15:18] Alain Veuve: Yeah, I see that a lot.

[15:18 - 15:58] Urs Kälin: And there we are now doing a POC, a proof of concept, where we are now just testing that. So we are at home on a completely different story than somehow selling an archive system. And the second thing that we also notice in the project, where we then somehow read out the vendor document, i.e. the supplier invoice, then there is always something else that comes along, be it a purchase order, delivery bill, be it an enterprise resource planning system, where we can actually match well today. Because we can then somehow add Parashift to the document types. So yes, in detail and there I am already on the communication level, in the project inside happens here extremely much actually.

[15:58 - 16:04] Alain Veuve: Okay. What about exotic use cases, document use cases? Can you get something like that in?

[16:04 - 16:14] Urs Kälin: At the moment, I'm happy if we can handle our core business. Actually, we are now almost full for the next six months, I actually don't like to hear that, because that then also blocks...

[16:14 - 16:15] Alain Veuve: Yes, of course...

[16:15 - 16:39] Urs Kälin: Then we have to be able to grow again...And I think the space for innovations and ideas, that arises in my head, but if you don't have a sparring partner on the other side to say: „'Cool' or whether 'your youth researches'", I actually miss that a little bit, this sparring partner function. That's why it's nice to have the conversation with you, so we can discuss that a little bit as well.

[16:39 - 16:41] Alain Veuve: If we can find the time now and then...

[16:41 - 16:44] Urs Kälin: Yes, exactly, you know that, you have to take your time...

[16:44 - 17:08] Alain Veuve: That's it, that's it, exactly. Everybody has the same amount of time. Maybe one question in the end. How do you see the future? Where is the journey going? Now for you at simplyfile, but also in general in the SME market, where do you see the trends? What is a must-do for an SME entrepreneur in the next 24 months?

[17:08 - 18:17] Urs Kälin: What he should do from my point of view is to realize that it is a synergy and not a war of applications. He needs to see, he needs a strong business software underneath, like Navision, AIX, Abacus, whatever it is. And above that, everything that is automations, speed, efficiency, proximity to the customer, it needs solutions like we offer him. For example, with M-Files. And I have less and less discussions, like "my system can do everything, I don't need anything around it", because the customers have realized that the dynamics, the efficiency, forward looking is so feasible. I think there is still a lot of room for maneuver, but that is also a bit of the old consultant attitude of the ERP systems, which are now slowly opening up and above all...I recently had a seminar with one of the largest Abacus integrators, we have always met with customers, so I said, I'll give him a call now. So we presented each other the portfolio, where we also learn of course. And on the other hand, the Abacus team is totally enthusiastic about what is possible, not to "rape" a system, but simply out-of-the-box...

[18:17 - 18:18] Alain Veuve: ...Best of breed.

[18:18 - 18:36] Urs Kälin: I think that is also the challenge for the entrepreneurs, because the consultants talk at them, the trusted advisor, the ERP provider, can also bring the plan on the wrong track. But that is not easy for the entrepreneur side either.

[18:36 - 18:45] Alain Veuve: Yes, I understand. Okay, all right. Thank you very much for your insights, that was very exciting and to another time gladly again.

[18:45 - 18:54] Outro.