Case Study: Cirque du Soleil achieves faster invoice responses with SAP Business AI

Transforming the business with high-flying invoice assistant powered by SAP Business AI

Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group, a global live entertainment company, was struggling to manage about 70,000 invoices a year and a heavy volume of Accounts Payable inquiries, many asking for invoice status updates. The multilingual nature of these requests and the manual effort needed to investigate invoices, translate messages, and draft responses created delays and backlog. SAP Business AI was used to help address this challenge.

SAP implemented an AI-powered Invoice Assistant that reviews incoming emails, categorizes requests by urgency and sentiment, extracts invoice details, checks status in SAP systems, and drafts bilingual replies in English and French. With SAP, Cirque du Soleil cut urgent email response time from 48 hours to 1 hour, improved non-priority response times by more than 25%, and reduced the AP request backlog by more than 25%, while improving accuracy, prioritization, and supplier satisfaction.

Cirque du Soleil

Philippe Lalumière

Vice President of Information Technology