Date: 30.10.2025 (2025-10-30)
Marc Vendramet (30.10.2025) • https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-vendramet/ • Senior Data & AI Analyst at Unit8 • HSG & Campus Events Team at START 2016 • Ich arbeite gerade an einer neuen Idee - nämlich einer KI-basierten Integrationsplattform, die sich direkt mit Legacy-Software verbinden kann - selbst mit Systemen ohne APIs - und dadurch stabile Echtzeitdatenzugriffe ermöglicht. • Klar! Sehr coole Idee. Ich habe so etwas ähnliches tatsächlich schonmal selber als Idee mit einem Kollegen besprochen der im SAP Umfeld tätig ist. • Pitch UI as API idea
• What is their focus as a company? What is a typical customer problem?
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• Legacy systems: does he deal with them (accounting tools, banking interfaces, HRIS, ERP)? How painful are integrations?
• Automation vs. data access
• API for data transfer and APIs for execution of tasks
• They build at a data platform (Databricks) at a large international company
• Biggest bottleneck: you have to copy data from the legacy system -> dump in Amazon S3 bucket -> then it is easy
• Data ingestion is the biggest pain point
• Solutions:
• Either hyperscaler help Data Fabric at MSFT
• Market place -> people can develop their own connectors
• Also: Airbite
• Systems w/o API: you have to connect to DB
• APIs are often not the holy grail -> if there are no APIs -> either you build one or via DB
• Everytime you copy data -> load on system (e.g. SAP) -> problem -> overload
• They mostly build pipelines -> e.g. scheduled (e.g. one time per day)
• RPA:
• No use at all -> solution of last resort -> via UI
• E.g. when there is an export function
• Palantir, Celonis, Databricks -> they use different technology - they do a lot of Palantir Foundry, Databricks, Azure
• Foundry is very good -> complete all in one - a lot of connectors, pipelineing tool, web app tool, dashboarding tool - neat integrations
• UI as API
• UiPath, BluePrism -> they will go crazy to agentic approach
• Accounting:
• No real projects
• Agrees that it is an area where a lot can be done
• Often SAP -> Rechnungseingang und Verbuchung
• Legacy SW SAP he looked at himself to found:
• Banks have mega legacy software for very specific thing -> nobody wants to change them, but very expensive
• They thought: What are the common tools and rebuild them cheaper
• How much focus on automation and agents already?
• Task at customers:
• Process level analytics: Sales dashboards, data for Sales dashboard, KYC, Kreditvergabe
• Automation:
• So far they did not do that - but now with agentic wave
• Enterprises very early - governance issue - no really established players -> difficult to commit to agents
• Do they work in finance / accounting area?
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• Hypothesis: general tools like n8n are too complex to set up for many processes -> important to specialise?
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• Day-to-day reality: What are the most admin-heavy processes in his finance role (invoices, reconciliations, reporting, payroll, compliance, audits)?
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• Is he automating today? If yes, which tools (Excel macros, Zapier, RPA, ERP features)?
• If yes: who does it? Which tools? What works? What does not work?
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• If no, why not (cost, complexity, lack of time, no clear ROI)?
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• More processes to automate:
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• Other automations from other people / departments:
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• Successes & frustrations: if he had a “magic wand,” what would he automate first?
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• Ask if he can introduce you to 3 peers in similar roles (finance leads in other startups).
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• Other:
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