Corporate finance faces a significant challenge as businesses strive for speed while finance teams remain mired in outdated processes. Acknowledging this issue, Safebooks has raised $15 million in seed funding to address what its co-founder and CEO, Ahikam Kaufman, describes as the CFO’s “data plumbing” problem. This funding round, which concluded on December 9, 2023, positions Safebooks to develop AI agents that aim to streamline financial workflows.
Despite advancements in automation across various business functions, finance departments continue to rely heavily on manual tasks and fragmented technologies. Teams often grapple with integrating data from multiple sources, including ERPs, CRMs, and banking systems, resulting in slow and error-prone workflows. Kaufman points out that as the demand for real-time financial insights intensifies, the gap between the rapid pace of business and the sluggishness of financial operations widens.
Safebooks intends to bridge this gap by creating a unified platform that sits atop existing financial systems. This approach is designed to enhance the Time to Cash process by automating reconciliation and reducing the risk of errors, all while maintaining current staffing levels. Kaufman emphasizes that finance teams are burdened by two distinct types of work: validating data across fragmented systems and making critical accounting decisions. The former, he argues, is a repetitive task that can be automated, allowing professionals to focus on more strategic activities.
The Safebooks platform is engineered to ingest both structured and unstructured data, mapping it into a cohesive financial data graph. This unified dataset enables the system to automatically identify discrepancies and inconsistencies across thousands of transactions. For instance, one customer reported reducing contract processing time from approximately 22 minutes to just 22 seconds. Such efficiency is crucial for finance teams managing high transaction volumes and needing instant clarity on their financial standings.
Kaufman also addressed a common challenge in finance automation: timing mismatches between systems. While some platforms update instantly, others, especially traditional ERPs, operate on a batch basis. He asserts that Safebooks focuses on the order-to-cash process due to its direct impact on compliance and customer relations. Errors in this area can quickly become apparent to clients, making accurate and timely data management essential.
As companies scale, the complexity of manual oversight becomes unmanageable. Kaufman noted that even with a larger workforce, supervising tens of thousands of revenue transactions remains a daunting task. The introduction of AI agents allows finance teams to enhance their output without necessarily increasing their headcount. These agents operate continuously, reviewing contracts and cross-referencing systems to flag issues in real time, thus mitigating operational risks.
This capability is particularly vital for companies experiencing rapid growth, such as those in the tech industry that may see annual increases of 25%, 50%, or even 100%. These organizations often discover that traditional manual processes cannot keep pace with their expansion. Safebooks offers an alternative solution that enhances accuracy and control, even as transaction volumes soar.
Kaufman believes that exposure to automation will permanently alter expectations within finance teams. He encapsulates this mindset with a lesson inspired by Steve Jobs: the true innovation lies not in replacing human roles, but in combining human judgment with advanced tools. This integration has the potential to empower the office of the CFO to operate at the speed required by modern businesses, transforming financial processes for the future.
