Why has AI produced surprisingly few benefits, even though AI tools have been used for years? According to Digia’s CEO, Timo Levoranta, the discussion is still dominated by hype and is too technology‑driven.
"Organizations are being pushed technologies instead of solving their actual problems."
Levoranta emphasizes that major AI benefits do not come simply by buying AI assistants or agents. Real productivity gains are achieved only when the needs of the organization are understood and the right solutions are integrated into everyday processes. AI can then assist work and take care of parts of the process under human supervision.
This pragmatic approach has already delivered highly promising results in Finland. A great example is Söderberg & Partners.
Söderberg & Partners is the largest insurance brokerage and financial services expert organization in the Nordics. The group employs nearly 5,000 people, and in Finland more than 100 experts work across 13 locations.
According to Maria Leander, Director of Services, many insurance brokerages have merged into the company in Finland. This growth significantly increased the amount of manual work. Up to more than 20,000 insurance documents and other materials may arrive each month, and many of them previously had to be entered into systems manually.
"As the number of customers grew, two people spent all their working hours naming and sorting incoming documents. Neither found the work meaningful."
Manual work also increased due to the need to input insurance policy details into Söderberg & Partners’ systems. The company wanted to automate these routine tasks, but this was challenging because terminology, document templates, and insurance products vary by insurer.
The solution was a modern automation system developed by Digia, leveraging advanced AI technologies. The system prepares suggestions for expert review, drastically reducing manual work.
Söderberg & Partners requires that AI does not send anything directly to customers. Experts review and verify all AI-generated content to ensure accuracy and quality. The goal, however, was to free up expert time for more meaningful work and customer service — and this goal was reached exceptionally well.
"When AI names and categorizes documents, its accuracy rate exceeds 95%. Experts only need to make changes to about every 20th document."
For entering insurance policy data into internal systems, the company aims for 80% of documents to be transferred completely error-free — a target Leander believes is achievable.
"The system creates a huge time savings. In document processing, the team’s volume efficiency has grown by 60% in a year, and most of the improvement is thanks to the new AI system."
Business value has also been generated through improved data quality. With AI assistance, work can be done more accurately than before.
”The AI system has significantly freed experts’ time for customer work and service development. Employee satisfaction and wellbeing have also improved.”
Leander highlights that at Söderberg & Partners, the purpose of using AI is not to replace expert work but to ensure that their time is spent where it creates the most value for customers.
"Experts now have more time to understand customer situations, analyze them, and provide higher-quality service. That is a tremendous benefit. We are very satisfied."
“AI is often not about spectacular things but about everyday solutions that streamline and automate work. There is a huge demand for these now,” says Digia’s Levoranta.
”The companies that succeed in the AI transformation are those that rethink their operations from new perspectives.”
Utilizing AI requires strong expertise and understanding of different AI and automation technologies and where they are suitable. It is also essential to stay up to date, as AI evolves quickly and new use cases emerge continuously. Levoranta stresses that a new mindset is needed at the same time:
"The companies that succeed best are those that consider from the start how AI can be embedded at the core of services and processes."
If you want to learn more about how AI can be integrated into your company’s business processes, explore our AI solutions here >>