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Building a market leader: the Netvisor growth story

Article

Building a market leader: the Netvisor growth story

Janne Lyytikäinen, Business Area Director at Visma Solutions, has had a front-row seat watching – and actively shaping – the growth of Netvisor. Operating as a product line under Visma Solutions, Netvisor has evolved into a market leader with a clear mission: to automate financial management so thoroughly that entrepreneurs and accounting offices can focus on growth and business development rather than routine tasks.

Article

Building a market leader: the Netvisor growth story

Janne Lyytikäinen, Business Area Director at Visma Solutions, has had a front-row seat watching – and actively shaping – the growth of Netvisor. Operating as a product line under Visma Solutions, Netvisor has evolved into a market leader with a clear mission: to automate financial management so thoroughly that entrepreneurs and accounting offices can focus on growth and business development rather than routine tasks.

Business insights

Article

Building a market leader: the Netvisor growth story

Janne Lyytikäinen, Business Area Director at Visma Solutions, has had a front-row seat watching – and actively shaping – the growth of Netvisor. Operating as a product line under Visma Solutions, Netvisor has evolved into a market leader with a clear mission: to automate financial management so thoroughly that entrepreneurs and accounting offices can focus on growth and business development rather than routine tasks.

Business insights

Janne Lyytikäinen, Business Area Director at Visma Solutions, has had a front-row seat watching – and actively shaping – the growth of Netvisor. Operating as a product line under Visma Solutions, Netvisor has evolved into a market leader with a clear mission: to automate financial management so thoroughly that entrepreneurs and accounting offices can focus on growth and business development rather than routine tasks.

“Looking back, Netvisor’s business model has remained the same at its core since the beginning: partnerships with accounting offices are the driving force of our operations,” says Janne Lyytikäinen.

Netvisor has never been just software; it is an ecosystem. From the start, the goal was to build a financial management platform for the SMB segment that offered the highest level of automation on the market. This strategic choice has ensured that today, Netvisor serves the widest customer segment in the market, ranging from entrepreneurs to listed companies and public sector organisations.

Partner-based model at the heart of success

One of the key insights in Netvisor’s growth story was an early investment in a partner-based business model.

“What makes Netvisor a market leader is that we have the fewest customers who are not managed through a partner-based model,” Lyytikäinen explains. “This means that our accounting office partners and their client companies use the same system in real-time. From the beginning, accounting offices offered Netvisor specifically to their best client companies”.

Today, Netvisor has approximately 800 accounting office partners, and Finland’s most growth-oriented offices belong to this network. About one-third of their accounting office partners operate solely on Netvisor, which is a testament to the strong trust in the platform and the product’s ability to scale with the customer.

The courage to choose – and what to leave undone

Growth requires not only taking the right actions but also the courage to leave things undone. As Netvisor scaled, management had to make difficult decisions to maintain focus.

“We have made big decisions and removed, for example, CRM features from the product to focus on our core expertise and avoid creating overlaps with other Visma products,” Lyytikäinen says.

A strategic choice was also made regarding internationalisation. Although expanding into Sweden and the Baltics was once considered by the original founders, with Visma’s ownership, the decision was made to focus entirely on Finland. This focus has enabled undisputed market leadership domestically.

Accelerating growth with Visma

Visma acquired Netvisor as a high-growth business in 2012. Lyytikäinen, who joined the company’s leadership later, gives full credit to Netvisor’s founders for the strong brand and corporate culture they created. The founders’ idealism about changing the market gave Netvisor the mandate to act as a pioneer.

“I believe the original founders are happy that the brand they created has been respected and that Netvisor has been led and developed well at Visma,” Lyytikäinen says.

Visma’s role has not been just that of an owner, but a growth accelerator. 

“The most significant scale benefits from Visma’s ownership have been the opportunities to invest in product development, customer service, sales, and marketing. The growth rate became even stronger when investments extended beyond just traditional coding,” Lyytikäinen notes.

The relationship has been reciprocal. Netvisor has acted as a pioneer in SaaS expertise and the accounting office concept within Visma, sharing lessons that have been utilised across the group in other countries as well.

“Visma is the best home for those who want to build their own business further. It offers a path to growing one’s own brand and brings with it a goal-oriented culture,” Lyytikäinen adds.

A mandate to lead with AI

Janne Lyytikäinen sees that financial management is currently experiencing a new disruption with the development of artificial intelligence. Netvisor’s position as a market leader gives it a mandate – and an obligation – to act as a forerunner.

“We are living through a new disruption in financial management due to the development of AI. We have a mandate to automate financial management and, through that, the business of accounting offices as well,” Lyytikäinen envisions. “Automation and AI are changing the everyday life of accounting offices, and our job is to ensure that our customers get all the benefits from this”.

Netvisor’s growth story is proof that when a product is sufficiently good for both the professional and the end-customer, and when there is a strong partner like Visma in the background, limits are made to be broken.

Facts about Netvisor

  • Founded: 2002 in Lappeenranta, Finland (official launch in 2004)
  • Part of Visma Group since: 2012
  • Mission: To offer SaaS-based, fully integrated financial management software for shared use between accounting offices and end-customers
  • Partners & Customers: Approximately 800 accounting office partners and over 45,000 end-customers
  • Employees: 210+ in the product line
  • Revenue: €105 million (2025)
  • Integrations: 300+ productised integrations
  • Automation: 97% of vouchers are generated automatically by the system


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