Home · Agentic solutions · The Order-to-Cash control tower
Case study · Finance · OperationsCash does not wait for Monday
The Order-to-Cash control tower
Every blocked order, disputed invoice and breached credit limit flows into one process: an agent diagnoses, a robot executes, a human approves with one decision on Teams. Maestro™ governs the whole.
Executive summary
O2C exceptions scattered across inboxes, Excel and SAP; revenue waits for manual decisions.
One flow in Maestro™: the agent gathers context, proposes the decision, the robot executes it.
Faster revenue realisation, lower DSO, full auditability of every decision.
SAP SD/FI, ServiceNow, Teams; UiPath agents + robots under Maestro™.
An FMCG distributor, 12,000 orders a month
6% of orders become exceptions: credit block, missing price, dispute. That is 720 cases a month — each touching a different team and a different system.
Nobody sees the whole picture. Sales calls finance, finance checks the credit spreadsheet, the customer waits. An order that could ship in the morning ships two days later.
The current reality
- SystemThe order blocks in SAP
- WaitingWaits in a review queue — half a day on average
- HumanAn analyst hunts for context in FD33, FBL5N and email
- HumanAsks the account owner about the client — calls, Teams, waiting
- Error riskA gut-feel decision without full payment history
- HumanManual release in VKM1 and a note in a spreadsheet
- WaitingInvoice and shipment pushed back 1–2 days
The hidden cost of the current process
Half a day of delay looks harmless. At annual scale it is not half a day.
- 300 hours a month of analysts and sales gathering context instead of selling.
- Delayed invoicing raises DSO and ties up working capital — invisibly, every month.
- Credit decisions depend on who is on duty; no consistent thresholds, no trail.
The cost of doing nothing
Manual work is an operational tax: the automation investment is finite, the manual cost is paid again every month.
The process after automation
- AutomationA robot detects the block within a minute
- AutomationThe agent compiles limit, balance, history, open disputes
- AutomationCompany rules: low risk released automatically
- HumanHigh-value exceptions: one decision on Teams
- AutomationThe robot releases; the invoice goes out the same day
What the automation handles
- Detecting and classifying every exception 24/7
- Complete SAP data and client history in one view
- Automatic releases within credit-policy thresholds
When a human decides
- Decisions above value or risk thresholds
- Credit-policy changes and strategic exceptions
- Board-level client escalations
Before
After
Value model — example assumptions
Business benefits
- Revenue realised sooner — orders stop waiting for people
- Consistent credit decisions by thresholds, not mood
- The O2C team absorbs 2× volume without headcount growth
- Every decision fully traceable — audits stop hurting
Board-level KPIs affected
What management gains
- A live view of how much revenue is stuck and why
- Measurable decision SLAs instead of anecdotes
- Predictability: bottlenecks visible before they grow
Estimate it for your organisation
An illustrative estimate based on your inputs. A model of released capacity — not a savings promise.
Systems in this scenario
Inputs
- SAP SD (VKM1)
- SAP FI (FD33, FBL5N)
- Outlook / Teams
Mientha agentic layer
- UiPath Agent Builder
- UiPath robots
- Maestro™ · Action Center
Core systems
- SAP
- ServiceNow
- Power BI / hurtownia
Human approval: Teams / Action Center
What we deliver
- Exception-process mapping with O2C owners
- Decision rules and thresholds agreed with finance
- Agent + robots + Maestro™ orchestration in your environment
- A decision panel on Teams and in Action Center
- Tests on real cases from recent months
- Monitoring, a weekly report and continuous threshold tuning
What we need to start
- A 4–8 week exception export (no personal data)
- Access to the O2C process owner for 2–3 workshops
- The current credit policy and approval thresholds
- A technical account for the SAP test environment
Implementation roadmap
Discovery
We map the process, data and exceptions with process owners.
Design
Target flow, business rules, approval thresholds.
Build
Agents, robots and integrations in your environment.
Validate
Tests on real cases, exception handling.
Go-live
Controlled rollout with human oversight.
Optimise
Monitoring, reporting and continuous improvement.
Typical duration depends on systems and rules — a single process is usually weeks, not quarters.
Risk and controls
Autonomy under control
- Value thresholds: above the limit a human always decides
- A full audit trail: data, rule, decision, actor
- Permissions mirrored from SAP — the agent sees no more than the analyst
- A kill switch and one-minute fallback to the manual process
Why now
- Every month of delay is another ~€9,000 of operational tax in this model
- Volumes grow faster than credit teams
- Competitors who release in an hour win on availability
Why this matters to:
Lower DSO and risk control without growing the team.
Orders flow; exceptions stop stalling operations.
A standard UiPath platform instead of another orphan script.
Questions we usually hear
SAP blocks — but it does not gather context, propose decisions or chase people. We automate exactly the gap between block and decision.
Automatic releases only work within thresholds you set. Everything above — always a human. Every case has a full trail.
That is why we start from your 4–8 weeks of data, not a template. The rules mirror your policy — or the project is not worth doing.
When this may not be the right solution
- A dozen exceptions a month — a good checklist is enough
- Credit policy changes weekly and is not written down
- Client master data in SAP is incomplete — fix data first
A question for your next board meeting
What is one day sooner worth across 720 blocked cases every month?
How much revenue is waiting in your exception queue today?
A one-week export of blocked orders is enough — we will size the potential on your data.
Show us your O2C process