Go Autonomous Shifts B2B Commerce into Hyperdrive
Welcome to Autonomous Commerce
By Akriti Dokania, Partner at Ridge Ventures
B2B commerce is r̵o̵t̵t̵e̵n̵ booming in the state of Denmark.
Go Autonomous, a Copenhagen-based startup, is globalizing its “Autonomous Commerce” movement after turbocharging sales and customer support operations for some of the biggest manufacturers and distributors in Scandinavia.
This is exciting in its own right but doubly so given that Ridge Ventures led Go Autonomous’ Series A, along with our friends across the pond at Octopus Ventures. The round gives Go Autonomous the funding it needs to ramp up adoption in the UK and Europe while preparing for its expansion to the US.
However, that’s burying the lead a bit. The real story? Go Autonomous has firmly established itself as a challenger in the automation software realm but, more than that, it’s ushered in an “Autonomous Commerce” era that’s redefining what’s possible in enterprise finance and sales operations. Yousuf Khan, my colleague and thought partner on this deal (and a five-time CIO of companies like Pure Storage, Automation Anywhere, and Moveworks) knows better than anyone. Go Autonomous’ out-of-the-box approach and ease of integration outclass even the biggest players in the RPA (robotic process automation) space.
Seemingly every time I speak to B2B sales folks it’s the same story: their inbox is a madhouse and the disconnect between CRMs — their system of record — and email — where the truth lies — doesn’t help. How do you merge these two, and automate them, without taxing the user?
We finally have an answer: Go Autonomous.
Less automation, more aggravation
In the B2B sales world, email is king. Email inboxes are still primarily where transactions are made and where companies generate a large swath of their revenue. It’s also the channel through which enterprise businesses communicate with customers.
One would expect tip-top efficiency from such a key revenue hub, but many of these email-powered sales and customer service tasks are executed at AOL dial-up speed.
Customer requests around pricing and lead times leave companies in quicksand. Customer-facing teams must scan emails for invoice details and enter case information into an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system before assigning the case to a colleague and responding to the customer. Valuable time lost. More errors made. The 1–3 minutes it takes to handle these tasks manually also makes it hard to capitalize on additional revenue opportunities.
With many companies bringing in more than 50% of their sales via email, and the automation software market continuing to take off, the time for manufacturers and distributors to ditch traditional case management systems was yesterday. The streamlined operations, increased efficiency, and significant cost savings are too valuable to ignore. Businesses know it, too. Enterprises want out-of-the-box capabilities. User-friendly, plug and play.
So, why not give old-timey B2B commerce practices a much-needed AI facelift?
Ready, set, Go Autonomous
Go Autonomous is an idyllic pairing of B2B commerce and automation: a seamless, efficient, and scalable AI-powered solution that prioritizes the most critical workflows in B2B sales: purchase orders.
Customer care departments have customer requests coming out of their ears — millions of emails per year for the average international manufacturer or distributor. Go Autonomous identifies the intent of emails arriving in an inbox, extracts and structures the necessary information, and hands it off to ERPs in real-time, enabling end-to-end automation of quotes and orders.
No need to tediously sift through email text/images and invoice PDFs. Go Autonomous puts these manual tasks on autopilot while also capturing commercial and operational insights at scale.
Go Autonomous’ automated sales order tool, Flow, pictured below, seamlessly integrates with Salesforce. Sales and customer service teams, equipped with AI-powered sales order management, can finally say goodbye to manually typing data into an ERP, CRM, or case management system.
Aside from the automation component, Go Autonomous represents another changing of the guard: heavily serviced models to intuitive, user-centric software.
The modern enterprise business prefers user-friendly solutions that are adaptable and don’t require significant time or money to implement. Extensive customization? Steep learning curve? No thanks. Go Autonomous satisfies these customer expectations (and then some) by centering the user experience. A product, equal parts robust and straightforward, that delivers faster ROI and empowers internal teams to manage and modify automation processes with ease.
The Autonomous Commerce era
Go Autonomous is hitting its stride at just the right time. Digital transformation continues to permeate various industries, and intelligent automation provides the operational efficiency and cost savings that enterprises crave. Go Autonomous clearly has automated B2B commerce covered. Its AI’s ability to understand intent, content, PDFs, or anything else in an email, along with the marginal change management required from its customers, rewrites the playbook on how B2B companies can optimally transact with, and delight, customers while amplifying revenue.
The Go Autonomous squad is more than capable of making Autonomous Commerce the industry standard. Led by founder and CEO Bjarke Ruse Sejersen, previously the Head of Digital at Satair (a subsidiary of Airbus), Go Autonomous’ founding team has plenty of experience automating complex workflows in legacy industries. This includes Nikita Smagin, Head of Customer Success, and Jacob Ramlov, Head of AI/ML — both of whom worked together at McKinsey — and Jacob Hessellund, an AI/ML practitioner.
The burgeoning intelligent automation market puts Go Autonomous in prime position to make a big run, as does its ease of implementation — a crucial differentiator from low-code/no-code solutions that can’t be successfully installed without a professional services firm. Grundfos and Saint-Gobain are among the Industry-leading manufacturers and distributors enjoying Go Autonomous’ stress-free setup and intuitive approach.
I look forward to watching other companies “Go Autonomous” and join an Autonomous Commerce movement that truly has the potential to forever change how enterprises interact, transact, and work.
Go team Autonomous!
