Nestlé is turning to artificial intelligence agents inside its new SAP finance system to prioritize overdue invoices and tell collectors what to do next. Luca Dell’Orletta, Nestlé’s global head of IT innovation and enterprise architecture, said in an SAP Connect announcement Oct. 6 that the company’s SAP S/4HANA transformation across 140 countries is creating a connected digital core with “consistent processes, trusted data and greater visibility across markets and functions.”
He said SAP’s Joule Accounts Receivable Assistant can build on that foundation to automatically prioritize collections work based on risk and business context and recommend the next best action.
SAP’s Assistant Splits Collections Among Four Software Agents
The assistant works like a team of specialists, each handling one step of the job, according to SAP’s product page. Four of them handle collections. One prepares account insights so collectors can secure faster payment commitments. A second sends the follow-up email. A third works through contested invoices. A fourth builds the dispute case before it is logged, checking the supporting documents and flagging duplicate invoices.
SAP says the assistant speeds up cash collection and lowers days sales outstanding, the number of days a company takes to collect payment after a sale. The page gives no figures for either claim.
SAP has not said when the assistant reaches general availability. Most of its new finance, spend management, HR, customer experience and supply chain assistants will roll out through early-adopter programs and general availability releases between now and the first quarter of 2027, The New Stack reported.
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Nestlé started moving its finance and operations systems to SAP in 2022. In October 2025 it finished the first phase, which put 50,000 users in 112 countries across Asia, Oceania and Africa on the new system, Procurement Magazine reported. Nestlé operates in 185 countries and said at the time it planned to finish the rest within two years.
Chris Wright, Nestlé’s chief information officer, said in the same report that having a common ERP system as the backbone is already “a tremendous advantage.”
Companies Automate 73% of Receivables Work, With Integration as the Hurdle
Nestlé is adding agents to work many companies have already automated. The average company surveyed now automates 73% of accounts receivable processes, up from 55% a year earlier, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Time to Cash: What Two Years of Data Say About Faster Cash and Rising Risk.” The share automating more than 80% of the work rose from 17% to 38%.
Integration complexity is the barrier CFOs cite most for going further, with 90% naming it, up from 67% in 2025, the report found. The July 2026 survey covered 100 U.S. CFOs at companies with $250 million to $2.5 billion in annual revenue.
The payoff is measured in working capital. The Hackett Group’s U.S. working capital survey found $1.7 trillion in excess working capital at the 1,000 largest U.S. public nonfinancial companies, with $600 billion of it tied to receivables, as PYMNTS reported in April.
Lee An Schommer, chief product officer at Billtrust, told PYMNTS that companies using platforms that combine invoicing, payments and collections see a 23% reduction in days sales outstanding. For Nestlé, the real test starts when the agents have to turn 140 countries worth of overdue invoices into cash.
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