The client
A global professional services firm with about 300 legal entities in about 50 jurisdictions and 36 currencies. Finance runs on Microsoft Dynamics 365. Approvals move through Outlook, Adobe Acrobat Sign, and Slack.
The engagement
Four workflows were in scope, each priced against the firm's own figures:
- Accounts payable: 4,000 invoices a month and 350 approvers.
- Client billing: about 70 billers prepare 7,500 draft invoices a month, through a 10-day partner review.
- Bank reconciliation: 350 a month, each built by hand, with $15.5M open.
- Opening new work: won work cannot be billed until someone sets up the project by hand, 6,000 times a year.
What the pilot found
Two forward-deployed engineers ran a 4-week pilot. They studied the records and interviewed the people who do the work. At the start, 36% of invoices were paid late, clients paid in 58 days on average, revenue leakage was 6.1% of billings, and the month-end close took 10 days. Accounts payable ran 17 steps across 6 owners, with 6 rework loops. Four of those steps and 2 of the loops appeared in no interview or procedure.
- Invoices were routed by a rule nobody had written down. The records showed it.
- About 60 to 70 invoices a week went to the wrong approver and had to be sent on again.
- Almost every payment run fell on one weekday, though nobody described a schedule.
Accounts payable charged $5 to each invoice. Counting the work in all 6 departments it touched, an invoice cost $13.
The redesign
Accounts payable was the focus. It now runs on 4 agents with 3 decisions left to people. Agents fix matching and coding problems before an invoice goes for approval, so nobody chases approvers or reroutes invoices. About 500 invoices a month still need a person. The straight-through rate below counts invoices cleared with no human correction. The $6 includes ongoing support and maintenance.
Before17 steps, 6 owners, 6 loops
11 days
After7 steps, 3 human decisions, 1 loop
3 days
- Manual step
- Agent step
- Person decides
- Rework loop
Process steps
- Before
- 17
- After
- 7
- Change
- 59% fewer
Cycle time
- Before
- 11 days
- After
- 3 days
- Change
- 73% shorter
Exception loops
- Before
- 6
- After
- 1
- Change
- 83% fewer
Straight-through rate
- Before
- 18%
- After
- 87%
- Change
- +69 pts
Invoices a month needing a person
- Before
- ~3,300
- After
- ~500
- Change
- 85% fewer
Cost per invoice
- Before
- $13
- After
- $6
- Change
- 54% lower
| Before | After | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Process steps | 17 | 7 | 59% fewer |
| Cycle time | 11 days | 3 days | 73% shorter |
| Exception loops | 6 | 1 | 83% fewer |
| Straight-through rate | 18% | 87% | +69 pts |
| Invoices a month needing a person | ~3,300 | ~500 | 85% fewer |
| Cost per invoice | $13 | $6 | 54% lower |
4 weeks of discovery, then 4 weeks of deployment
- Weeks 1 to 4, discovery: the pilot above maps the process, interviews the team, and sets the baseline for every figure on this page.
- Week 5, build: the agents are built on the redesigned process, the routing rule, and the approval matrix.
- Week 6, shadow: the agents work live invoices with read-only access, and their results are compared with the team's.
- Week 7, validate: the agents are tested on 3 months of past exceptions, and the accounts payable manager and the controller sign off.
- Week 8, deploy: live in Dynamics 365, in the firm's own environment, with every action logged.
- From week 8, train: the engineers stay on site with the team and the approvers, and improve the coding from every correction.
What the agent does
- Each morning the agent works the invoice queue in Dynamics 365. Clean invoices post on their own.
- When an invoice cannot post, for example because its cost center is closed, the agent stops. It never guesses.
- It asks the budget owner in Slack, with the purchase order and the match attached.
- The budget owner replies. The agent posts the invoice and saves the reply on the record.
Results
The value below covers all 4 workflows, against the pilot baseline. Clients pay in 41 days instead of 58, because each invoice goes out once, complete and correct. Revenue leakage falls from 6.1% of billings to 5.7%. The month-end close takes 7 days instead of 10. Faster payment also releases about $70M of cash once, which the annual value does not count.
| Source | Annual value | How |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity released | $6.2M | 92,000 hours at $67 fully loaded |
| Revenue recovered | $6.0M | 0.4 points of leakage on annual billings |
| Working capital carry | $2.8M | 17 days of DSO, carried at 4.0% |
| Total | $15M | The minimum of the $15M to $33M a year at stake across the 4 workflows |
What stays with people
Agents never make the final call on money. The accounts payable manager approves exceptions and releases payment runs. Treasury sends every wire, the controller owns every change to a control, and partners approve every bill before it reaches a client. Every agent action records the rule, the evidence, and the approval. A wrong posting is reversed the same way a person's would be.
