Scania’s corporate venture capital fund announces an investment in AKOA, a fast-growing company in business process automation. The investment will enable AKOA to further accelerate its growth in new markets, as well as to strengthen its organisation and offering. This marks the fifth investment by Scania Growth Capital.
As modern organisations become increasingly reliant on systems and software to support and enable their business in a more digital world, the need for automation and digital transformation solutions is increasing. A growing number of tasks and processes have moved from physical to digital, from paper to electronic and from traditional ink signatures to today’s e-signatures.
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AKOA, which stands for Another Kind of Automation, focuses on business process automation through technologies such as robotic process automation, virtual assistants, chatbots and artificial intelligence. Using technologies such as these, organisations can automate digital business processes without affecting underlying IT environments or drastically re-engineering the logic in the processes. This allows their employees to move towards more value-adding activities that help to evolve their businesses.
“We combine expertise in technology, extensive experience in change management and consulting, with a passion for developing the workspace of the future. In a market where up to 60 percent of all automation implementations fail to deliver the desired outcomes, we are thrilled and honoured to receive this investment from Scania, one of Europe’s most respected brands, and a client of ours. This investment and partnering with Scania to leverage their unique knowledge and vast network, will enable us to accelerate our growth and strengthen our offering”, says Sebastian Toro, founder, AKOA.
AKOA has grown organically, while maintaining its position as a global leader. To date, AKOA has helped 6 Fortune Global 500 companies and more than 80 clients globally transform their businesses.
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“AKOA has established themselves as a global leader within the rapidly growing area of intelligent automation. In addition, they have created and been able to nurture a very positive corporate culture,” says Daniel Riazzoli, a partner at the management company of Scania Growth Capital.
Scania provides expertise and industry knowledge to the companies that Scania Growth Capital invests in. Anne-Marie Öhlén, director, Finance Processes and Innovation, Scania, will join AKOA’s board of directors.
“We have traditionally been very focused on automating and streamlining our production processes at Scania. We are now also taking automation and digitalisation to the next level for other functions, like finance, accounting and HR. Through Scania Growth Capital, we have an opportunity to tap into early development and innovation that is industry-relevant, while outside our own core business, and to feed our perspective as a large industrial player back to AKOA,” says Anne-Marie Öhlén.
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