Despite a year of turbulence in global markets, we continued to grow by delivering mission-critical cloud software, giving our customers the financial confidence to succeed in a shifting business environment. We’re setting the standard via connected products, best-in-class technology, commitment to security, and emerging excellence in sustainability.
Connected products
Customer expectations for business software have never been higher. The products we deliver today must reduce manual work exponentially, be enjoyable to use, and solve daily challenges while also forecasting potential problems down the line.
Meeting these expectations requires us to lead in software development and set the benchmark in terms of user experience. We have to strike the balance between standardised and customised, ensuring that our products are sufficiently adapted to local markets and regulations. Furthermore, we strengthen our offerings by acquiring SaaS companies with complementary products. New companies join us almost weekly, attracted by our strong customer base, pooled resources, and expertise.
With a steady stream of new companies on board, we’re better able to serve a growing need among our customers: connected software. Regardless of size or industry, our customers depend on multiple products to handle their core functions, from accounting, invoicing, and payroll to logistics, financial management, and business intelligence. But these systems must talk to each other to unlock the most value. Building APIs that support and connect our customers’ ecosystems is a top priority for us, as we strive to provide a fully connected experience for every mission-critical business function.
Connectivity through APIs is a vital element in our promise to customers: that they’re in total control as they grow, expand, and implement their business strategy. That’s why we invest in performance optimisation, continuously increasing the speed of API endpoints. By connecting products, we help customers to see their complex businesses as one, giving them the clarity to lead their businesses into the future.
Explore our APIs: Visit Visma Developer
Best-in-class technology
To meet our customers’ expectations, we need to innovate. To ensure that we build better products, we’re always identifying and removing manual effort and other friction from our product development work. This includes organising ourselves to maximise autonomy and minimise organisational dependencies, automating software delivery processes like testing and deployment, and taking advantage of self-service and automation enabled by public cloud technology. In 2022, we increased our deployment frequency, meaning how often we deliver product improvements, by 30% compared to 2021.
Our software does the work for you. To identify the most valuable problems to solve, and to validate the most suitable solutions, we use both qualitative and quantitative methods: from running design sprints and interviewing users to analysing product usage and user feedback measured within our products. In 2022, we added 26 products to our product usage analytics platform and 35 products to our user feedback platform.
Improving our software through AI continues to be a priority. In 2022, Visma products processed over 105 million documents with Smartscan, our document data capture service. That’s a 75% increase compared to 2021. In Q4, we launched AI-based services for inventory optimisation for stock-holding companies and started development of anomaly detection for time registration and invoice data, continuously adding to a growing portfolio of AI capabilities that enrich our products.
Explore our engineering culture and practices
Commitment to security
Our strong commitment to security is reflected in our significant investments and management structure, as well as our implemented practices in well-published Security Programs. These programs enable us to deliver safe services and maintain a strong understanding of threats that apply to Visma companies and our customers.
During 2022, we observed a relatively stable cybersecurity situation, despite obvious geopolitical instability. There was an increase in global ransomware, as well as an increase in fraud attempts against businesses globally. We also observed that international police efforts made dents in the criminal organisations. 2022 also brought new insight into previously unknown cyber capabilities of nation states and their supporting structures in organised crime.
Those learnings have been implemented in our services accordingly. Through this continuous effort, we continue to support our customers and ensure that the services we provide are safe. We share our security learnings through contributions to science, in addition to transparent sharing with the industry and the public.
Read more on the Visma Trust Centre
Emerging excellence in sustainability
To demonstrate our commitment, we became a proud participant of the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative. We also improved our impact in the areas we know best: our software and our people.
We have hundreds of software products that emit carbon, and that’ll continue as long as they’re developed, hosted and used. One of the most effective ways of reducing environmental impact is to have as many customers as possible using our public cloud products. We’re proud to say that this number increases by 5–10% each year. We’re also helping customers in their sustainability work by offering carbon accounting capabilities in our software.
See all our environmental efforts
Our people’s engagement, dedication, and sense of belonging are key to our success. Over the last years, we’ve evolved our Diversity & Inclusion discipline, we embrace our differences, and we foster an inclusive environment. People are front and centre in our software too, from our emphasis on accessibility, to our AI that minimises human biases, to our products that directly help disadvantaged groups.
See all our social sustainability efforts
Looking towards the future
Our vision is to shape the future of society through technology, providing the digital tools that businesses and organisations need to organise, analyse, and improve their everyday operations. We strongly believe that technology, when used wisely, is a positive driver for both employee engagement and happy customers.
By investing in our people and products, we aim to continue setting the standard for efficient, flexible, and user-friendly cloud business software.
