AI-based software systems are becoming increasingly important in everyday use, including at Vertec internally, in the use of Vertec software and with customers. On this page we would like to explain our attitude towards AI systems and describe the exact use. With this information, we also meet the documentation requirements of the EU AI Act.
We operate an AI-based chatbot on the Vertec website.
This chatbot is RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) based and is provided by Intercom. Only publicly available information about the Vertec group as a company and the Vertec software (most prominently the Knowledge Base) are indexed and used for the generation of answers, supplemented by some other documents that we store directly in the Intercom UI (e.g. about the Vertec software model). Intercom currently uses Claude from Anthropic as an LLM.
The terms of use for users can be found on the Ai chatbot terms of use page. There is also a section on Chatbot support in the website’s general Privacy Policy
Vertec software contains some AI-based features that must either be activated by customers or licensed as a stand-alone module. Without this activation or licensing, Vertec will not use AI features.
With the AI Know-how Management module, the Vertec customer licenses a RAG system based on Squirro technology. In this case, Vertec operates one Squirro instance per customer in the data centers in the DACH region. The RAG database is populated with texts from Vertec, which Squirro accesses via a web service API from Vertec. The AI Know-how Management module then allows a chat with the data stored in Vertec. For the interpretation of the questions and the preparation of the answers, an LLM is required – it is up to the customer which one to use. Self-operated open-source LLMs can also be connected, as long as they are accessible from the Squirro instance. From experience, however, this Vertec AI Chat delivers the best results with the LLMs of OpenAI.
Customers who have licensed the Procurement & Purchases module can activate automatic receipt recognition for expenses and accounts payable. In this case, the receipts or PDF postings entered in Vertec (e.g. recorded with the Vertec Phone App) are uploaded to a Vertec-operated service at Microsoft Azure. The service tries to read the commercial key data of the posting using an AI-based service from Azure and sends them back to the Vertec client for further processing. The results of the AI-based receipt recognition are shown to the Vertec user for correction.
The document data (receipt or PDF) is therefore uploaded to Azure, but Vertec does not save it there.
Various AI-based systems are also used internally, especially for the enrichment of self-created content (e.g. videos or texts/translations). The Vertec group is always the author of this content. However, Vertec does not use any AI systems to support corporate decisions (including HR). Vertec does not use “high-risk AI systems”.