Industry
Industrial equipment sales
Use Case
Invoice processing
Company size
1-10
Headquarters
London
Knowledge work automation
Discover our solutions
About
Charter Auctions are leading auctioneers of manufacturing machinery and machine tools. They offer both transactional and strategic equipment lifecycle management for businesses.
With a small but effective team, Charter Auctions wanted to maintain their lean model while scaling operations. We sat down with James Tomlinson, Managing Director, to learn more about their vision for automation and how V7 fits into it.
The challenge
As Charter Auctions grew, manual administrative work began to stretch the team thin. Rather than just expanding head count, James was looking for a strategic and comprehensive approach to streamlining resource-heavy tasks.
AI was the clear solution, and invoice processing seemed like a natural place to start.
"We were drowning in invoices,” James said. “At year-end, it got so bad that we were putting in 14-hour weekends just to get through everything. It was unsustainable.”
James is no stranger to using AI for productivity, and he knew the right solution would need to be scalable and flexible. “I have developed systems in the past myself that help us, but we just needed something that was agnostic to everything, and wasn't all done by me.”
The solution
Charter Auctions chose V7 Go as their AI platform. They are beginning by building out an AI invoice processing agent, before moving on to wider workflow automation.
James is enjoying working collaboratively with the Solutions Engineering team. “The Solutions Engineering team have a really deep knowledge and understanding of V7 Go. So I can bring ideas to them, and say, ‘how would you suggest we do it?’ I’m throwing curveballs, and we can work together to find the best solution. It’s always good to have two minds come together.”
James also highlights V7 Go’s adaptability as a major differentiator. “My favourite feature is that you have the ability to decide exactly what each property is, and what it does”, he says. “I’ve used other solutions where each column is preset. On V7 Go, my ‘wow’ moment was realizing I could go from thinking ‘I wish it could do this’ to actually giving the property that function. It doesn’t matter if you’re telling it to process an invoice or create a picture of a unicorn, you can make it happen.”
The results
“We’re working towards the end goal of 95% automation for invoice processing, with 5% edge cases requiring manual intervention. The time savings will be huge,” says James.
Beyond the business benefits, the quality-of-life improvements will be equally meaningful. No one needs to spend their Saturdays catching up on admin anymore. We can actually enjoy the weekend.”
James is clear that this is a long term, strategic play. “It’s not just going to be a one-off solution for invoicing. We are looking for V7 Go and AI in general to be the beating heart of our company and our growth. It will make us more productive as a company, liaising with customers, automating tasks, even finding new work.”