Building agents for contract-to-cash operations

At a glance

A global agriculture business with more than 100,000 employees worked with WIQ on contract-to-cash operations across two business units. The work involved finance, logistics, and contract administration teams, from processing settlements to updating shipment forecasts.

The wider order-to-cash program deployed 64 agents, reduced handoffs by 80%, and lowered working capital tied up by $5.2 million. This story follows three of the workflows: settlement processing, shipment forecasting, and contract cleanup. All three were connected to the company’s systems and tested end to end in its own AI environment.

Discovery scope

participants observed

20+

business units

2

business tools identified during discovery

40+

process blueprints documented

50+

The discovery model estimated roughly 750 hours of weekly work across the mapped processes. The analysis classified about half of that workload as suitable for automation without a human checkpoint. This is an assessment of the mapped process steps, not a measured reduction in operating time.

Connecting the agent to the ERP

SAP access ran through the company’s internal settlement application. WIQ built a custom connector in Copilot Studio to call that application’s API through a gateway to the company’s internal network, authenticating on a user’s behalf. The integration exposed the settlement operations the agent needed.

That connection covered a defined part of the ERP. Vendor-invoice processing and other SAP workflows would require additional API operations or connections. The wider rollout plan pairs agent development with the customer’s work to grant access and configure its systems.

Processing settlements in SAP

settlement cases per week

30

manual handling per case

13 min

Settlement processing has dependencies between steps. The agent first finds eligible documents that are not already being processed and groups them by counterparty. It then proposes, generates, releases, and approves the settlements, waiting for each operation to finish before starting the next.

Completion alone does not establish success. After generation and approval, the agent checks SAP log messages for errors. If a step fails, it stops and gives the operator the affected settlement groups and the system’s error message. Invoice preparation and subsequent document checks remain outside the agent’s scope.

Forecast updates and contract review

Shipment forecasting involved roughly five cycles a week, at about 20 minutes of manual handling per cycle. The agent reads the day's load orders, combines them with operational updates, and writes the results into the forecast workbooks. Missing or inconsistent inputs go to the logistics coordinator for review.

Contract cleanup was lower volume: fewer than five cases a week, taking approximately 10–15 minutes each. The agent finds open contracts whose shipment windows have expired and prepares a cancellation email containing the contract details. An operator reviews and sends it.

Results across the order-to-cash program

less working capital tied up

$5.2M

fewer handoffs

80%

agents deployed across order to cash

64

The results span the broader order-to-cash program, including work beyond the three workflows described here. The $5.2 million reduction measures working capital tied up in operations; it is separate from operating-cost savings.

Expanding across workflows and regions

WIQ’s expansion plan combines deployment with the customer’s engineers, additional system connections, and training for the teams that will operate the agents. The roadmap includes more settlement work, vendor-invoice processing, financial clearing, and transportation workflows in SAP.

Two additional settlement workflows were identified that could use the integration built for the pilot. Broader SAP access would support automation of additional mapped workflows. The plan also covers additional regions, with discovery and workflow selection repeated for each operation.